President Emerita Liseann Gouin

Liseann Gouin is a founding officer of the Society. Through programs, events and public communication, she enthusiastically promotes mutually beneficial friendship and understanding among American and Japanese people. She strives to ensure the positive reception of the more than 15,000 Japanese nationals living in Michigan and contributing to the Detroit area globalized automotive industry. She invents and supports opportunities for friendship and familiarity as the basis of productive collaboration. A leader in the Detroit area for decades, she has an extensive network of corporate, institutional, and governmental relationships, through which she creates and collaborates on projects and programming that foster Japan-US relations. Many of her projects demonstrate the contributions of traditional and contemporary Japanese craftsmanship and manufacturing processes to technological excellence.

She is the recipient of the 2025 Japan Ministry of Foreign Affairs Foreign Minister’s Commendation for “outstanding achievements in international fields to promote friendship between Japan and other countries”.

Liseann is recognized by the National Association of Japan America Societies for “exceptional service to US-Japan ties, most notably in the field of cultural exchange”.

She is also the Wayne State University 2024 Honoree of the Women of Ferry Street for her service to the National Register of Historic Places, Charles Lang Freer House. The House was the original home of Detroit Industrialist and Japanese art collector Charles Lang Freer, whose eventual gift of art and the Freer Gallery of Art was the first of the Smithsonian Institution’s Art Museums.

Liseann has chaired the Friends of Asian Arts and Cultures Board of Directors at the Detroit Institute of Arts. She has served on a range of community committees such as the Committee for the Restoration of the Freer House Garden at Detroit’s Charles Lang Freer House and the City of Novi Welcome Committee. She has also taught language as an adjunct professor at the University of Michigan.

Her advanced degrees are in International Relations, Economics, and in Art History. She has traveled extensively in Japan and Asia, attending professional conferences in Japan. She is a graduate of the University of Kyoto’s intensive seminar on Japanese Garden Design. She also travels regularly and broadly in Europe and is a graduate of the Institute Europeo di Design Contemporary Art in Venice course.