Beginning in 1979,Ms.Nonaka (Tokyo, June 18, 1954) was a newcaster and anchorwoman for NHK, the national TV station in Japan. Her main programs at NHK included ‘Weekly Abroad’, ‘Sports and News’, ‘Sunday Sports Special’ and others. From 1993 to 1997, She was the anchorwoman for the popular business program ‘World Business Satellite’ at TV Tokyo. In addition to activities as a journalist, she has been member for many Japanese government committees for Cabinet Office, Ministry of Finance, Ministry of Education and Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry. She graduated from Sophia University with a major in Journalism, and went on to study photo journalism at the University of Missouri, Columbia in the USA. Furthermore, she has been adviser and a member of the board of directors for many large Japanese corporations such as Asahi Breweries, Sumitomo Corporation, NTT Docomo, Nikko Citigroup, and Unisys, Japan. In 2002, she became and outside director of the board for Sanyo Electric. In 2005, she became CEO for Sanyo Electric. In her position, she created the new corporation vision ‘Think Gaia’ and started to restructure many business divisions under the new vision for Sanyo to become a leading company to solve environmental problems with its technology. She created a three-year Evolution Plan aimed at reorganizing the business portfolio and improving the corporate financial structure and conditions.

In a short time, Sanyo introduced more than ten new Think Gaia (TG) products, and the following four "world-first" products:
1) Eneloop batteries: rechargeable batteries that can be recharged up to a thousand times.
2) Aqua: a washing machine and dryer that reduces water usage in a wash-cycle from 200 liters to 8 liters by purifying the used water and making air-washing possible through ozone technology.
3) Enegreen: an innovative way to reduce electricity consumption in air-conditioners, refrigerators, and food show-cases in stores and supermarkets. Enegreen absorbs as much CO2 as a forest with an area 130-times larger than the store.
4) Virus-Washer: an air-cleaner that eliminates up to 99 percent of airborne viruses, including avian influenza (bird flu) virus, using a technology that electrolyzes simple tap water.

‘The Gaia Initiative’, a not-for-profit organization was established in 2007 to call not only one corporation, Sanyo, but also wider stakeholders (corporations, citizen, government and NGO/NPO) for solving environmental problems in the world, Gaia. In may of 2008, NPO Gaia initiative of Nonaka agreed to collaborate with The Energy and Resources Institute (Teri) in India with Dr. Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of Ipcc and the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize winner.

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