Tom Sawayanagi is the Representative Director of Brain Picks Incorporated, which he founded in 2020 to provide hotel management and investment advisory services. He is also a Specially-Appointed Professor at Rikkyo University’s College of Tourism.

Before establishing Brain Picks, Sawayanagi served as Head of Japan, Hotels & Hospitality Group at JLL from 2000 to 2020. Hiss achievements at JLL include advisory work in contract negotiations for Mandarin Oriental Tokyo, The Ritz-Carlton Tokyo, Four Seasons Tokyo Otemachi, Amanemu, and IHG-ANA Hotels Group Japan joint venture, as well as leading investment sales such as the ANA Hotel Portfolio, Tomamu Resort, “the b” Hotel Portfolio, Westin Guam, and others with a total deal volume of about 600 billion yen. Earlier, he worked at Greenwich NatWest Securities and Long-Term Credit Bank of Japan. Sawayanagi is also an author of several Japanese-language textbooks on hotel accounting, valuation, and risk management. He holds a Bachelor’s in Economics from Hitotsubashi University and a Master of Management in Hospitality from Cornell University.