PAIGE COTTINGHAM-STREATER
Secretary-General
Paige Cottingham-Streater is Executive Director of the Japan-U.S. Friendship Commission (JUSFC), an independent federal grant-making agency that supports research, education, public affairs, and exchange with Japan. She also serves as Secretary-General of the Conference on Educational and Cultural Interchange (CULCON), a binational advisory panel to the governments of Japan and the United States. Ms. Cottingham-Streater has dedicated her career to public service, policy making, and sustaining the US-Japan partnership. Serving in these leadership positions, Ms. Cottingham-Streater is responsible for raising awareness about the important bilateral relationship between Japan and the United States, promoting educational and cultural exchange, and supporting a pipeline of next generation leaders.
Prior to her service with the Commission and CULCON, Ms. Cottingham-Streater spent sixteen years at the Maureen and Mike Mansfield Foundation, where she launched the first-ever government-to-government professional exchange between Japan and the United States. Earlier in her career, Paige Cottingham-Streater established the U.S.-Japan Project at the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies; she served as Counsel and Legislative Assistant in the office of Congressman Donald M. Payne (D-NJ); and staff attorney at the U.S. Department of Treasury, Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms.
Ms. Cottingham-Streater has numerous volunteer positions. She is a proud member of the Board of Trustees of the Montclair Kimberley Academy and a Founding Chair of the Board of Directors of the US Japan Exchange and Teaching Program Alumni Association (USJETAA).
Paige Cottingham-Streater is the recipient of Japan’s Foreign Minister’s Commendation in recognition of her longstanding work to strengthen U.S.-Japan relations. The award, made on March 31, 2004, commemorated the 150th anniversary of the Treaty of Peace and Amity between Japan and the United States.
In 2022, the Government of Japan conferred on Ms. Cottingham-Streater an Imperial Decoration, the Order of the Rising Sun, Gold Rays with Neck Ribbon. This award is in recognition of her contributions to the promotion of people-to-people exchanges and mutual understanding between Japan and the United States.
Ms. Cottingham-Streater received her Juris Doctor from the National Law Center at The George Washington University. She also holds a B.A. in Government and Asian Studies from Connecticut College.
Caitlin Adkins
Assistant Secretary-General
Caitlin Adkins serves as Assistant Secretary General-U.S. CULCON at the Japan-U.S. Friendship Commission. In this role she is responsible for ensuring the seamless functioning of the United States CULCON panel and its binational and other related activities. Ms. Adkins is bilingually trained in Japanese and English with several years of experience as an expert analyst and research coordinator working with government agencies and cultural education organizations in the United States and Japan. Immediately prior to joining the federal government she was a teaching fellow for the Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations at the University of Pennsylvania, as well as the graduate associate for the Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Program, also at Penn. Prior to this, she served as program associate for the Social Sciences Research Council (SSRC) Tokyo Office, which managed the Abe Fellowship Program, New Voices Japan, and Global Scholars Initiative. She also routinely interfaced as writer and translator between government officials and local sites in Japan to achieve cultural exchange goals for a travel magazine based in Japan. Ms. Adkins is currently a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Pennsylvania’s Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations. She earned her MA at the University of Michigan’s Center for Japanese Studies and her BA in Japanese Studies summa cum laude from the University of Findlay. She is an alumna of Stanford University’s Inter-University Center for Japanese Language Studies (IUC) in Yokohama and holds the Japanese Language Proficiency Test N-1 Certification.
ケイトリン（名）アドキンズ（氏）は日米友好基金にて日米文化教育交流会議（通称 カルコン）の事務局長補佐として、カルコン委員会や、同委員会に関連する日米間の活動およびその他関連活動の業務に従事している。日本語と英語をバイリンガルで習得しており、アナリスト及び研究活動の促進支援で日本と米国の政府機関と文化教育施設にて数年間の実務経験がある。アドキンズ氏はカルコン在職前、ペンシルベニア大学大学院 人文科学学部 東アジア言語文化学科のティーチング・フェローと、同大学のジェンダー、セクシュアリティ、女性プログラムの大学院生アソシエイトであった。また、米国社会科学研究会議（通称 SSRC)の東京事務所にてプログラムアソシエイトとして、安倍フェローシップ、「New Voices from Japan」、「Global Scholars Initiative」などのプログラム運営管理と、日本の観光雑誌のライター・翻訳者として、文化交流を目的とした政府と地方自治体の間の交渉・協力を促進する実務経験がある。現在、アドキンズ氏はペンシルベニア大学大学院の人文科学学部 東アジア言語文化学科の博士取得候補者である。フィンドレー大学にて日本研究の専門で最優等位（summa cum laude）を取得し卒業、ミシガン大学大学院日本研究センター修了。アメリカ・カナダ大学連合日本研究センター（通称 IUC)の日本専門家の育成に焦点を絞った上級日本語教育プログラムに参加し、日本語能力試験1級の資格取得。