Fireside was first launched in 2010, but its origin traces back to a series of separate conversations over a number of years among friends who wanted to create a community of young leaders committed to building personal friendship, supporting each others’ growth, and understanding each others’ cultures better.

Our story begins in 2008 when Julianne Lee and James Kondo first started discussing the idea of creating a retreat for young leaders who are interested in supporting each other’s personal and spiritual growth to become better individuals as they navigate through the various challenges of life.

A separate conversation was started in 2009 when Julianne and Kumi Fujisawa began envisioning a community of young leaders from diverse fields in Korea, Japan, and China. The three countries were geographically close, and many of the same people were meeting at international conferences and forums, but Kumi and Julianne felt that there was a need for a structure that was not only focused on discussing issues but could deepen personal relationships as well as our understanding of the commonalities and differences of our cultures.

Shortly afterwards, Julianne and Joseph Kim were with friends in Seoul exchanging stories about career experiences, and agreed that having a safe environment to share such stories – personal and business – would be helpful in supporting other friends with similar issues and concerns.

These separate discussions merged, and in October 2010, the first Fireside Chat retreat took place. Eleven Koreans and Japanese met in Seoul, Korea for the first Fireside Chat Retreat. Deeply personal stories were shared in the first “What’s On Your Mind” session that established the Fireside tradition of frank conversations in complete privacy and confidentiality – one of the distinct features of the retreat. Rest of the program was devoted to visiting various parts of Seoul to allow the participants to get an insider’s view of the city. This, too, has become a tradition of Fireside – getting an intimate understanding of our friends’ home countries with our friends as trusted guides.

At the second retreat in Tokyo in 2011, Yat Siu joined as our first participant from the Greater China, completing our initial goal to create a community of friends in China, Japan, and Korea. Yat has since introduced other members from China to Fireside, including Oliver Spiesshofer, who joined the Steering Group as our sixth member in 2013. Robby Yung and Gen Kanai, from Greater China and Japan respectively, are our newest members of the Steering Group.

Since 2010, we have been holding biannual retreats rotating between Korea, Japan, and the Greater China in that order. After the first round of retreats in Seoul, Tokyo, and Hong Kong, new venues, Jeju and Nara, were included in order to encourage the participants to get to know not only the cities but to get deep down into the local flavors of these respective countries. They are our “homes” away from our home countries. We create new relationships in these “homes”, build partnerships with local institutions and support causes that bring us closer, make us more open and knowledgeable about each other.