Yoky Matsuoka

Yoky Matsuoka is the Founder & CEO of Yohana, an independently led subsidiary of Panasonic focused on building consumer technology products and services to help people live healthier and happier lives. As an accomplished executive and technologist, Matsuoka brings more than two decades of leadership experience to her role where she also leads global innovation and serves as the Managing Executive Officer of Panasonic Corporation. Before Yohana, Matsuoka brought her distinct approach to human-centric design to leading Tech Giants. Most recently as a Vice President at Google’s Healthcare organization, and before that as Chief Technology Officer at Nest. Before Nest, she was head of innovation and co-founder of Google X, the company’s research and development lab. She has also served in a senior executive role at Apple and was Chief Executive Officer of Quanttus, a wearable health technology startup. Before her work in Silicon Valley, Matsuoka’s career began in academia as an endowed professor at Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Washington. During her tenure, she founded and directed the Center for Sensorimotor Neural Engineering and the Neurobotics Laboratory to create devices to restore the human body’s capabilities for sensation and movement. Matsuoka received the MacArthur Genius Award for her work in robotics and neuroscience. With this grant, she founded YokyWorks Foundation, a non-profit organization dedicated to helping children with physical and learning challenges, focused on removing reading barriers to unlock the potential of every child. Matsuoka received her Ph.D. and S.M. from Massachusetts Institute of Technology and B.S. at the University of California, Berkeley, all in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. She has been featured in Fortune, Forbes, Fast Company, TechCrunch, and Wired. She currently resides in the Bay area with her husband, four children, dog, and pet pig.