Albany expat Melanie Brock appointed Member of the Order of Australia for service to Australia-Japan relations

The bright lights of Tokyo are a far cry from her humble hometown of Albany, but the south coast will always be home for high-flying consultant and newly-minted Member of the Order of Australia Melanie Brock. Over her 30 years living in Japan’s bustling capital, Ms Brock, 57, has made a name for herself as an influential and trusted voice in the Australian and Japanese corporate, not-for-profit and government spheres. Last week, her decades of “significant service to Australia-Japan relations” were honoured when she was appointed a Member of the Order of Australia on the Australia Day Honours List. Ms Brock said the AM was a “huge honour”. “I am very touched, particularly by the messages I have received, including a great number of people who I went to primary school and high school with, and people I haven’t heard from for decades but who are obviously a big part of your history and who I think of often,” she said. Born in Albany in 1964, Ms Brock’s road to Japan started somewhat reluctantly, when she was selected to spend a year in the country on a rotary exchange as a teenager. The Spencer Park Primary School and St Joseph’s College student said she was shocked when she received the news she would be living in Japan, after setting her sights on a European placement. Armed with little knowledge of the country awaiting her and only two words of Japanese taught to her by the flight attendants on the way over, the 17-year-old set off on a trip that would change the course of her life. Falling in love with the language and a “Japanese bloke” who would later become her husband, Ms Brock returned to Australia where she studied Japanese at the University of WA and completed a masters in Japanese interpreting at the University of Queensland. After separating from her husband, Ms Brock moved to Tokyo in 1995 with her three and four-year-old sons to raise them among the heritage, culture and language of Japan. Today, Ms Brock wears many hats as principal and managing director of Melanie Brock Advisory where she uses her bursting contact book to help Australian businesses find their feet in the Japanese market. Ms Brock writes a column for the Australian Financial Review and is the founder of not-for-profit organisation, Celebrating Women in Japan. She is the chair emeritus of the Australian and New Zealand Chamber of Commerce in Japan after serving as chair for six years. In 2019, she was the first woman and non-Japanese director appointed to the board of electronics group Sega Sammy Holdings. She was previously the Japanese regional manager for Meat and Livestock Australia. Ms Brock was also made an honorary citizen for her work helping communities in the aftermath of the Fukushima disaster. With such a diverse resume, it was difficult for Ms Brock to pinpoint a moment she was most proud of as she rose up the ranks as an Australia woman in a male-dominated Japanese culture. “I think when you do something that is a little out there and potentially more risky and harder to pull off, they are the moments that you are most proud of,” she said. “Say for example when I convinced the Australian beef industry that we really needed to shift a lot of the marketing programs from being male-centric. “Where most of the buyers of Australian beef were men, 99 per cent of the consumers in Japan are women, so we made a big step and shifted our marketing material to reflect the need to convince women that Aussie beef was the go. “At the start there were a lot of people that thought that wasn’t really the right way to go and we managed to put on a really interesting marketing program that convinced them that Japanese women needed to be listened to more. “I am also proud of the Celebrating Women in Japan not-for-profit that I established. “That was where we profiled Japanese women daily on social media ... trying to do away with some of the stereotypes of Japanese women.” Despite missing her family in WA, Ms Brock said she still had more to discover in Japan. “I love the notion that I am still finding things about Japan,” she said. “I love that there is still a lot to learn. “But what I would like to say is there are more areas where we are very similar and our challenges are the same. “You have seen a remarkable shift in the partnership between Australia and Japan at all levels now and I think that is probably a realisation that that is in fact the case.”