Saori Horikawa Leads with an Open Mind and a Love for Culture and Community

When she was a high schooler, Saori Horikawa would find herself commuting to school in Tokyo on a train so crowded, she couldn’t reach in her bag for a textbook, let alone hold it to read it. So the night before, she would record her textbooks so she could listen to them through her headphones. This is when she first realized that audio is a powerful tool for educating and improving the self, which was one of the reasons she was excited to join Audible, back in 2017.

As Head of Legal, APAC, Horikawa and her team of counsels in Australia, India, Singapore and Japan support the legal affairs relating to Audible’s offerings and operations in the Asia-Pacific region, including helping to strategize the launch of new businesses, product features and marketing initiatives; supporting licensing negotiations and original content development and production deals; and developing and implementing compliance strategies in the face of new regulations. Her team’s work helps to bring Audible’s catalog of entertaining, informative and inspiring listens to audiences from India to Australia to Japan.

Horikawa also founded the Japan Activate Caring Steering Committee, which comprises members from multiple teams and is dedicated to making an impact locally. She has organized volunteer projects with Habitat for Humanity and annual food drives with Second Harvest, and was part of the core team that worked with the Braille Library to bring selections of great audio storytelling to their visually impaired users.

What is something you believe is essential to succeeding as a leader?

With our global ways of working, I think it’s key for leaders to be open-minded to various perspectives to make better decisions, to also listen to the voices of those who may be quieter or may not be in the room (including our customers) but have valuable insights, and to understand their context. Culture Map is one book that has helped me navigate this challenge. I highly recommend it to those working cross-culturally.

What drew you to Audible?

When I was in high school, I used to commute an hour and a half to Tokyo in a fully packed, standing-only train where you couldn’t even move to reach into your bag to get a book out. I recorded sections of my textbooks on tape every night and listened on my Walkman on the train in the morning. Audio learning helped me achieve at school.

As a parent, I‘ve enjoyed family vacation car trips with my kids, listening to narrations of Greek myths and scary stories. These experiences taught me the joys and power of the spoken word, and I was excited to work for a company that contributes to culture and learning.

What is something you’ve accomplished while being a leader at Audible that you are particularly proud of?

Of course I’m proud of partnering closely with teams across Audible to achieve our business goals, but I am particularly proud to have founded our Japan Activate Caring Steering Committee in 2021, inspired by our People Principles. We are a cross-functional committee of people from across the Tokyo hub, with representatives from the legal, content, marketing and customer care teams. Over the past couple of years we have planned and delivered on several impact initiatives, including donating a selection of Audible content for Braille Library users, Habitat for Humanity projects involving clean-up and repair of orphanages in Western Tokyo and Kanagawa, and annual holiday food drives with Second Harvest Japan.

Our most recent project was with Mirai no Mori, a not-for-profit organization that creates programs for abused, neglected and orphaned youths. Mirai no Mori wanted our help creating an opportunity for these disadvantaged youths to learn about what people do for a living, and their career journeys.

If you could travel back in time, where would you land?

Maybe the early 11th century, to hang out with Lady Murasaki and trade poetry and gossip about court life and her literary rivals. It would be awesome to be able to read the chapters of the Tale of Genji as they were being written in real time, and find out if she really wrote those last chapters!

Lightning round

• Coffee or tea? Coffee. My blood type is probably coffee.
• Morning person or night owl? More a night owl.
• Where are you working from currently? Our Tokyo hub in Meguro.
• How long have you been supporting Audible? Six years.
• Who is your biggest inspiration, career-wise? My colleagues and team inspire me every day to be better—it’s such a privilege to work with incredibly smart, warm and dedicated people. Kathy Matsui (founder of the VC MPower Partners Fund) inspires me to think about how to nurture women in their careers in Japan, especially.
• Dine in or take out? Love both.
• Favorite outside of work hobby? Taiko (Japanese drumming).
• Favorite Audible listen, go. My current favorite listen is Sumi no Yurameki (Glimmer of Ink), by award-winning novelist Shion Miura. I love that the author chose shodo (the traditional Japanese art of calligraphy), a visual art, as a theme for a piece that was written specifically for audio first, and how you can almost see the images in your mind while listening.