“Our students are striving to become global citizens who contribute to the world,” Soka University of America President Edward M. Feasel said in his remarks to donors at the 22nd annual Peace Gala on Oct. 11, “and your financial support is the reason many of them are able to realize this dream.”
That support was on full display. Despite unexpected heavy rain, 340 guests turned out for the evening, which raised a net $1.25 million for the SUA scholarship fund. The evening also benefited from the generosity of Mark and Elisa Stad, who matched $200,000 in donations.
Faced with inclement weather, gala volunteers, staff, and vendors “worked nothing short of miracles to keep the evening going,” said Linda Kennedy, executive director of philanthropy. And gala attendees responded to the challenges with similar optimism and willingness to adapt.
“Our guests responded to every unexpected challenge with remarkable kindness, patience, and good humor,” she said. “In so many ways, they embodied the very qualities we hope to instill in every Soka graduate, turning adversity into an opportunity to demonstrate humanity, generosity, compassion, and grace.”
The gala began with a cocktail hour and silent auction at the Athenaeum on SUA’s campus. Guests then proceeded to the courtyard for dinner and a program hosted by Gene Kang, an Emmy Award-winning reporter with KTLA 5 News in Los Angeles. The evening featured a taiko performance by the student club Josho Daiko, university updates from President Feasel, and a speech by alumnus Daiki Katsukawa ’26 on the life-changing impact of donors’ generosity.
Auctioneer DawnMarie Kotsonis then led a live auction featuring a range of items and experiences, including a luxury three-night trip to Napa and autographed memorabilia from the 48th Grammy Awards. One of the auction’s most memorable packages included a crew jacket belonging to Baywatch reboot executive producer Michael Berk and a set visit, lunch with cast members, and a walk-on part in the show’s second season.
In his remarks, President Feasel described a momentous year for the university, which is celebrating its 25th anniversary. In June, SUA held a special event at Teachers College, Columbia University, to commemorate 30 years since university founder Daisaku Ikeda’s historic speech at the same institution, where he outlined the philosophy that would define global citizenship education at SUA.
In July, SUA’s campus hosted the first Earth Charter Youth Summit, bringing together 104 young people from 29 countries. Co-convened by Earth Charter International, UNESCO, and the Soka Institute for Global Solutions, the conference provided young leaders with three days of intensive learning and opportunities to expand their networks and connect with sustainability advocates working across six continents.
Feasel also highlighted recent achievements of SUA alumni, including Issei Takino ’07, CEO of the Japanese robotics company Mujin. His company was awarded this year’s Prime Minister’s Award for the best startup in Japan.
Another major development was SUA’s acquisition of the Middlebury Institute of International Studies campus in Monterey, where SUA will continue select graduate programs under the new name Monterey Institute of International Studies at Soka University of America.
“This new endeavor allows SUA to enter graduate professional education in fields that are aligned with SUA’s mission of global citizenship,” Feasel said, noting that the graduate school’s programs prepare students to promote peace and security, human rights, development, and sustainability.
Katsukawa, who graduated in May, was recovering from spine surgery when he began studying at SUA. A student-athlete saw him jogging and invited him to meet Patrick Boivin, head coach of the cross-country team. Katsukawa didn’t think he had what it took to compete, but Boivin invited him to join the team.
“He looked at a student who had just had back surgery and saw an athlete, months before I could see that for myself,” Katsukawa said.
That pattern of someone believing in him early, he explained, ran through the journey that led him to SUA and beyond. In 2019, when Katsukawa was a struggling high school student, Ikeda gave him a small paperweight shaped like the United Nations building. It took him years to understand the gesture.
“Nobody gives a failing student a model of the U.N. because of what he’s done,” he said. “You give it to him because of what you believe he’ll become.”
In 2023, a partnership with the Norwegian Nobel Institute brought Asle Toje, deputy leader of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, to SUA’s campus. Katsukawa’s class assignment was to nominate an organization for the Nobel Peace Prize, and he chose the Hiroshima and Nagasaki Peace Messengers, the student group he had belonged to in high school. Toje said he would carry the students’ choices back to Oslo. In October 2024, the committee awarded the prize to Nihon Hidankyo, the movement of atomic bomb survivors known as hibakusha.
Through what he called “Soka synchronicities,” Katsukawa was invited that December to Oslo, where he interpreted for five hibakusha during Nobel Week. In May, Katsukawa spoke at the U.N. Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference, where the two previous gatherings had ended without consensus. His invitation to Oslo the December before had opened that door.
He said his search for common ground began in SUA’s classrooms, where the liberal arts curriculum and close relationships among faculty, staff, and students in a small international community taught him “more than any textbook or syllabus could.”
Katsukawa is now pursuing a master’s degree in Conflict, Security, and Development in the Department of War Studies at King’s College London. He acknowledged it may seem curious for a graduate of a peace-focused university to study war, but said he wants to “create peace by finding common ground in the most challenging circumstances.”
Everything he found at SUA, he said, existed “because people who had never met me” decided that a student like him was worth preparing for. The culture of care at SUA, he added, “is not transactional. It is an unending current.”
“Every scholarship you’ve funded, every program you’ve supported,” he told the donors, “every seat in this very room is water poured into soil before anyone can prove what will grow from it.”
