Sylff News

The Sylff Association secretariat was pleased to welcome Chris Bush and Jan Tristan Gaspi from the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley, on March 26, 2025, as the very first visitors to our new office in Toranomon, Tokyo.

Bush is the executive director of the Institute for Business Innovation at Berkeley-Haas, and Gaspi is IBI’s associate director for finance and operations.

Berkeley-Haas implements a highly successful Sylff program, having disbursed some $200,000 in tuition support to six PhD students in AY2023–24, five of whom completed their dissertations. Sylff continues to be the most prestigious and generous fellowships available to graduate students at the Haas School of Business.

Jan Tristan Gaspi, right, and Chris Bush of UC Berkeley with members of the Sylff Association secretariat.

In addition to visiting the Tokyo Foundation, Bush and Gaspi met with many partners of UC Berkeley’s SkyDeck accelerator program while in Japan, including the Japan External Trade Organization (JETRO), major businesses, and universities.

Beyond SkyDeck, Berkeley-Haas also runs an Entrepreneurship Program that, for example, collaborates with Tohoku University to train top startups from the Sendai region in Lean Launch methodology. Haas has also hosted leading Japanese companies at the Berkeley Innovation Forum to explore building their innovation and entrepreneurial ecosystems.