"During my time at Rye Country Day, I learned what it meant to have a growth mindset, which is critical in my field. To this day, I'm still learning, and I don't see myself stopping. And all the credit for that goes to RCDS."
When Kenji Hashimoto arrived at Rye Country Day in the middle of sixth grade, he was fluent in Japanese but spoke not a word of English. Born in London to Japanese parents, he had lived in England until age six, moved to Tokyo for four years, and then to New York City where he enrolled in a Japanese charter school. “My parents only planned to live in the States for a few years before returning to Japan,” he explains. “Then they decided to settle in this country, so they sent me to Rye Country Day.”
Transitioning from coursework in Japanese to coursework in English in one fell swoop was incredibly challenging, Kenji concedes, but he doesn’t regret a moment of it. “My family was supportive, Rye Country Day was very accommodating to my unique situation, and the lessons I learned through that experience have helped to shape my life.”
For instance, it was at Rye Country Day that Kenji discovered his interest in computers. “I took my first computer science course while still in Middle School and quickly became fascinated,” he recalls. That interest carried Kenji through a master’s degree in electrical and computer engineering from Cornell University and on to his first job as a Senior Test R&D Engineer at Intel Corporation. “It was an important growth experience. I got to work as an engineer and learned how to innovate within a big company.”
Then fellow Cornell alumnus and friend Josh Dorward convinced Kenji to move to Silicon Valley for a position at Zazzle, a company that personalized physical products from t-shirts to tennis shoes. “We were uniting art and technology to power the online customization of physical products,” says Kenji. “Then Josh and I got the idea to apply the same concept to video by using cloud computing to solve the problem of customization in video.”
That brainstorm gave rise to Indivio, a startup founded by Kenji and his friend to allow marketers to customize their digital video ads. “For example, companies often need to localize marketing videos for different regions or countries by advertising in a different language,” Kenji explains. “With our technology, they can easily swap out the message in English for one in a local language, thereby allowing them to learn what resonates.”
The technology proved quite effective and in December of 2021, Indivio was acquired by Israeli-based tech company Cloudinary. Today Kenji and his team work with industries from retail and e-commerce to travel and hospitality and assist in marketing initiatives for familiar brands such as Nintendo, Peloton, Levi’s, and NBC.
For Kenji, conceiving of this merger between art and technology wasn’t surprising; indeed, he characterizes it as a natural outgrowth of his RCDS education. “I was exposed to so much at Rye Country Day— not only a rigorous academic program but also athletics, the arts, and music. I saw firsthand how one discipline could impact another,” he explains.
Kenji specifically remembers the Interdisciplinary Course in his senior year, which the students called “Interdis,” that was taught by a team of teachers from different departments. The course was developed as a way to encourage seniors to make critical connections between seemingly disparate concepts and ideate across a number of disciplines. The result was exciting ideas born out of collaboration and nuanced thinking. “That course really opened my eyes to the power that can be gained by approaching problems in an interdisciplinary manner.”
Rye Country Day’s commitment to giving back also made an impression, Kenji asserts. “Our motto, Not for Self, but for Service, has remained with me all these years.
For example, while a student at RCDS, I published the School’s sports weekly on the website. Though it was a small thing, it was one of several computer-related volunteer contributions I made at the School that became a meaningful experience later in life when starting my own online business.”
The School’s emphasis on lifelong learning left an indelible mark as well. “During my time at Rye Country Day, I learned what it meant to have a growth mindset, which is critical in my field. To this day, I’m still learning, and I don’t see myself stopping. And all the credit for that goes to RCDS.”
Looking back, Kenji is very grateful for his parents’ foresight in sending him to Rye Country Day. “RCDS provided me with such a rich, well-rounded education,” he enthuses. “It was an amazing environment in which to grow up and it prepared me for the hard work I faced, first in earning my college degrees and then when starting my own company. Both demanded strength and persistence, neither of which were new to me. I dug deep into the lessons learned through my Rye Country Day experiences, and they carried me through.”