Rina Kurihara

Founder,
Boarding School Alumni International

Rina Kurihara is an active youth leader passionate in the role of international relations and economics in global issues such as quality education and gender equality. She is the founder of Boarding School Alumni International (BSAI) and is a lead organizer at the Sino-Japan Youth Conference (SJYC) and a youth speaker at Catalyst 2030’s Catalysing Change Week.  

Her organization BSAI hosts 2 boarding school fairs every year, partnering with SAPIX and Nishimachi International School, accumulating over 200 middle school students and parents every time. Furthermore, through social media and other events, BSAI has impacted over 2000 middle school students and parents around the globe.

From this development of BSAI and her past internship at the Ministry of Japan, she noticed the urgency for quality education. One of the data points in her research at the ministry was that 60 million children grow up without a fundamental education due to poverty, lack of school, or gender. This gave her a new perspective of the world. Growing up in Tokyo for the first 14 years of her life, all her classmates and Rina had the right to receive an adequate education; however, she realized that they take this for granted. Quality education is power--power that she can use to make a better future, and there is no reason not to take advantage of that. Her project of BSAI was formally presented at Catalyst 2030’s Catalyzing Change Week 2022. Led by Rina, BSAI is currently working on establishing their very own scholarship program, targeted towards middle school girls around the globe who wish to attend boarding schools but are limited to due to financial issues.

In her spare time, Rina devotes her time to 8th year of running. She has won multiple awards in both Japan and in the US. Currently, she is aiming to break the school record for girl’s 800m.

In the near future, Rina aims to have those girls with the BSAI scholarship program to attend high quality education at boarding schools. In order to pursue this, she hopes to study international relations and economics.