#SITCE
Mr. Ogata was born in 1952, joined Japanese National Railways (JNR) in 1974 and afterward was assigned to East Japan Railway Company (JR East) when JNR was divided and privatized in 1987. He has been consistently working for railways for more than 44 years.
In JR East, after having experienced various management positions including General Manager of Customer Service, Investment Planning, Labor Relations, Public Relations and Transport Safety, he joined the Executive Directors as Director at the Transport and Rolling Stock Department in 2002. Since he was engaged many times in drafting the ‘safety middle term plan’, today he is considered as a leader in the field of safety within the company.
From 2008 to 2011, as Executive Vice President, he took the full responsibility of the management of the safe and reliable operator of railway network with daily 17 million passengers. At the same time, he also strongly led the very important railway projects such as the raise of velocity of High Speed Rail up to 320 km/h, the evolution of ICT and the further development of the smart IC card “Suica”, which JR East introduced in 2001. “Suica” is the strongest smartcard ticketing and micropayment system today in Japan.
As Vice Chairman of JR East since June 2011, he has been driving the open innovation and the open globalization of the management and technology onward to enhance the quality and variety of overall business domain of JR East.
Mr. Ogata was elected President of UITP in June 2015. During his term, he has enhanced and empowered public transport sector all over the world through his innovative vision. After completing his mandate in May 2017, he is currently Honorary President and President of Asia-Pacific, where he actively continues to play the role to promote further development and global communication network of public transport sector in the world.