Ginger Koto Vaughn

Ginger Koto Vaughn is a Lecturer in Communication at Rice Business. She teaches in the MBA program and leads diversity and intercultural communication workshops. She helped launch Rice’s Activate Engineering Communication Program in 2019 for engineering master’s students. She also teaches entrepreneurial communication and has served as a pitch coach for Texas Medical Center Innovation (TMCI) and UTSW. She mentors Japanese American emerging leaders for the US-Japan Council and guest lectures on diversity issues at Stanford’s Program on International and Cross-Cultural Education (SPICE) and the East-West Center. She serves as an adviser to the City of Houston on Japan-related matters for the Greater Houston Partnership’s Japan delegation. As a consultant, she’s worked with an array of clients including Tesla, Red Bull, H&M, UberEats, Govt. of Japan, Blades International, and Hayabusa Energy.

Prior to joining Rice, Ginger was a business journalist and media producer in Tokyo, Japan where she worked for NHK World broadcasting for over a decade. She also held faculty appointments at Hosei University and Akita International University’s (AIU) graduate program in communication. After getting her MBA from Waseda University, she worked in finance for JP Morgan Chase and BNP Paribas as an exotic swaps analyst.

Teaching Interests:

• Diversity and Intercultural Communication
• Communication Strategy and Organization
• Human Resource Development
• Persuasion through Storytelling
• Entrepreneurship
• Public Relations
• Networking
• Interviewing
• Mentoring

Research Interests:

Current research focuses on how diverse mentorship impacts minority women in organizations. Other scholarly interests include diversity communication training as a way to develop human capital and storytelling in persuasive communication.