Hiromi Nakazawa ’01: Facing big challenges
Hiromi Nakazawa ’01 lives with her husband Harper Reed ’01 and their young son in Chicago. She works as a tax senior manager at the global accounting firm Deloitte. Nakazawa grew up in the Yamanashi Prefecture in Japan, a sister state to Iowa, a connection that led to a scholarship funding her dream: living abroad and learning a new culture.
Her tight-knit family fretted over the idea of Nakazawa traveling so far from home, and she felt some trepidation about living in the Midwest. She soon learned it gave her opportunities: to learn about a new culture, meet new people, and understand Japan’s history better.
“I’m glad I came to Cornell,” she says. “The beautiful part of Midwest culture is that people are loyal, even if they are shy. I found them to be curious about people from outside their culture.”
Two years after transferring to Cornell, Nakazawa graduated with a bachelor’s degree in art with a focus on art history and a minor in anthropology; she went on to earn her master’s in art history from the Art Institute of Chicago.
She entered her industry in part because she wanted to use her bilingual skills and because she was interested in working with a group of multicultural women that she has now worked with at two different companies.
In Nakazawa’s work, she supports multinational companies that send and receive people from all over the globe. Her work makes sure companies and assignees are tax compliant, take the most tax-efficient positions, and that the host country and home country tax policies are met.
Nakazawa has faced many challenges, including when she was at Cornell.
Professor of Art History Chris Penn-Goetsch supported Nakazawa in her academic endeavors when she most needed someone in her corner to cheer her on. When she struggled, Penn-Goetsch was there for her.
“Chris was my hero and still is my hero.”
Being an international student is not easy.
Reading large volumes of her non-native language as a student could take copious amounts of her study time, a challenge her native English-speaking peers did not face. She reached out to Anthropology Professor Alfrieta Monagan to ask her which readings were really important. Monagan helped her prioritize.
“When I was on the West Coast in the U.S. there was a greater Asian community,” she says. “But in Iowa, that wasn’t the case. People could not differentiate between where I was from and someone who was from another Asian country.”
But Nakazawa’s toughest challenge to date is also her proudest moment.
“I struggled with fertility. We used surrogacy,” she says. “I am proud that I accepted the fact that it doesn’t matter how we started our family. I used to be secretive and ashamed of it, but after my son arrived, it didn’t matter. I love him so much. Now, I feel there is a reason why I have done all I’ve done and that is to get ready for him.”
Nakazawa stays in touch with her friends from Cornell and values those friendships. She knows they are always there for her. And she is amazed at times, at how two years at Cornell had such a deep impact on her life.
