Sonia Coman

Dr. Sonia Coman is an award-winning organizational leader, art and business scholar, poet, and visual artist, with over 15 years of experience across North America, Europe, and East Asia.

She is the Vice President of Elm Street Consulting Group, a Washington-based company providing solutions in government relations, brand and change management, and international business. She also serves on the core team of The World Innovation Network (TWIN), an international network of networks for Fortune 500 CEOs, serial entrepreneurs, and innovators. Dr. Coman led the Marketing and Communications team at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Asian Art as Audience Engagement Strategist. In 2023, she received the Outstanding Leadership Award at the Marketing 2.0 Conference.

She has a B.A. from Harvard University (Magna cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa) and a Ph.D. from Columbia University. Her dissertation shed light on previously unknown collaborations among French and Japanese artists and collectors at the turn of the 20th century, with far-reaching implications for our understanding of the role of cross-national exchanges in the arts. While at Columbia, she designed and taught the course, Diplomacy by Ceramics: The Soft Power of One Medium across World Cultures, exploring the intersection of diplomacy and the arts.

Dr. Coman serves on the Editorial Board of Brill’s Journal of Japonisme and as co-editor of the De Gruyter Series in Organizational and Management History. She co-authored the field-defining book, New Directions in Organizational and Management History (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2022), and publishes frequently on creativity and the history of organizations.

Dr. Coman is also an award-winning haiku poet. Her interest in Japanese literature began when, at age 10, the Japanese tea company Ito En selected one of her haiku as the winner of their annual competition, featuring her poem on the company’s products. Humbled by this early recognition, she committed to deepening her studies of Japanese language and literature, and has continued to write Japanese verse ever since. Her poetry has been published and awarded in Austria, Belgium, India, Italy, Japan, Romania, the UK, and the US.