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Award Date
1991
Major
Business Administration
Award Description
Akito Mizuno '74, the senior managing director of Mizuno, the world's largest sporting goods company, is the winner of the 1991 Distinguished Alumnus Award. As one of Japan's leading businessmen, Mizuno preserves a bit of the Titan spirit in Osaka. Founded in 1906 by his grandfather, the giant company began with the manufacture of baseballs, the first Western sport to captivate the Japanese public. Today Mizuno Corporation manufactures all types of athletic equipment, from scoreboards and shoes to baseball gloves and Speedo swimsuits. Akito followed his older brother, Masato, to the United States to learn English in preparation for a career in the family's international business. Himself a basketball player in Japan, Akito was a senior when Jack Sikma entered IWU and remembers making the trip to Kansas City to see the Titans play in the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics tournament in 1974-75. Mizuno regularly visits the U.S. to oversee his company's American branches in Georgia and California.