Davis Retires from Kyoto Prize Work

Long term La Jolla resident Richard (Dick) Davis announces his retirement after serving 20 years as CEO of the San Diego-based Kyoto Symposium Organization and the Kyoto Prize Symposium (KPS).

In announcing the retirement of Mr. Davis, organization Board Chairman Paul Robinson noted that when he first headed economic affairs for then-Mayor Pete Wilson in the 1970s and 1980s, he “had two heroes in San Diego” – Dick Davis and Malin Burnham.  Malin, a continuing vital community leader and philanthropist, was a key EDC board member when Dick was hired in 1977 to head the Economic Development Corporation (EDC).

Bookending Mr. Davis’s non-profit CEO career, “Malin became Chair of KSO in 2004 – and along with San Diegan executive Rod Lanthorne, hired Dick in an effort to keep the Kyoto Prize Symposium in San Diego for decades to come,” Robinson continued.  Over 60 Kyoto Prize laureates have now participated in the March symposium in San Diego. Some are known only within their fields. Others are renowned worldwide — Shinya Yamanaka, Tasuku Honjo, and Jane Goodall in the sciences; Akira Kurosawa and Pina Bausch in film/dance; Tadao Ando and William Kentridge in architecture/art; Michel Mayor, Rashid Sunyaev and Ed Witten in astrophysics/cosmology; Jurgen Habermas and Martha Nussbaum in philosophy/ethics; and the list goes on. Among the 124 laureates since 1985, two La Jollans have been recognized by the Kyoto Prize – the late oceanographer Walter Munk (1999) and the late molecular biologist Sydney Brenner (1990).

Since its founding, KPS has generated nearly $5 million in educational opportunities and college scholarships for San Diego and Tijuana-area high school seniors.  The March symposium events now attract live and online audiences in the thousands – inspiring the overall community, and especially our bi-national students toward academic excellence and lifelong creative achievement.

Mr. Davis, his wife Jan (a career AP history teacher) and their two daughters moved to La Jolla in 1975. Mr. Davis grew up in the Chicago area, spent 10 years on the East Coast, and now considers himself an appreciative Californian. He graduated from Princeton with an AB in politics – and earned his MBA at Harvard with a concentration in marketing. After graduate school he served in the U.S. Army as an artillery air defense first lieutenant, first on the staff of the Air Defense School at Fort Bliss and then as aide-de-camp and brigade logistics (S-4) officer at Osan Air Base in South Korea.

Before moving to La Jolla, Mr. Davis worked for Y&R and Lever Brothers in New York, followed by Clorox in Oakland. For 40 years he has been active with downtown San Diego Rotary, the Holiday Bowl and various Japan-related organizations in Southern California. He has been saluted by JETRO, San Diego EDC and the Japanese Friendship Garden and Museum for his strong contributions to US - Japan relations, including the recruitment of 30 Japanese and other firms to San Diego in his years with EDC. For 25 years he was active as a Japan Society volunteer, serving as president and chairman for several years.

Following Mr. Davis as Executive Director is Ms. Marisa Takeuchi Lin, who formerly served as Operations Manager and VP/COO during her six and a half years working for KPS. Marisa is a UCSD alumna with a BA in International Studies – and has 15 years of experience and non-profit accomplishments, including several years with the Japan Society, the Japanese American Historical Society of SD and the Japanese Friendship Garden and Museum in Balboa Park.

Next
Next

Japan’s 2024 Kyoto Prizes Honor John Pendry of Imperial College London, Paul F. Hoffman, University of Victoria, and William Forsythe, an International Ballet Choreographer