Erika Ito, MBA/MPH ‘26

Johns Hopkins Carey Business School and Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health

“Physician-leader harmonizing AI innovation, global health strategy, and human-centered care to transform lives at scale.”

Hometown: Tsu, Mie, Japan

Fun fact about yourself: I balance the precision of being Assistant Concertmaster for the Hopkins Symphony Orchestra with the grit of an Under Armour Flow Elite runner, a 2024 Baltimore Run Fest age group winner.

Undergraduate School and Degree: Tohoku University School of Medicine, Doctor of Medicine

Where was the last place you worked before enrolling in business school? Tohoku University Hospital (physician)

Where did you intern during the summer of 2025? Eli Lilly and Company, CAF-Development Bank of the Latin America and the Caribbean

Where will you be working after graduation? Eli Lilly and Company, Senior Manager

Community Work and Leadership Roles in Business School: During my time at Carey Business School, I pursued opportunities to build human-centered, globally scalable health systems at the intersection of medicine, AI, and policy. As a Roger and Flo Lipitz Center Student Fellow and an AI/Digital Health Student Fellow, I advanced projects focused on aging, public health, and responsible AI adoption. I also received the Student Opportunities Award to support research with the CAF–Development Bank of Latin America and the Caribbean. This included on-site digital health validation work in Ecuador and organizing a Washington, D.C., seminar with South American ministers on mental health investment priorities, as well as the Carey Global Immersion Scholarship to study Europe’s emerging fintech and AI innovation landscape in Germany.

Complementing these initiatives, I served as Assistant Concertmaster of the Hopkins Symphony Orchestra, was selected as a winner of the Hopkins Symphony Orchestra Concerto Competition, and performed in fundraising concerts that raised funding for public health research and mental health awareness, channeling music into empathy, resilience, and community impact.

Which academic or extracurricular achievement are you most proud of during business school? I was selected as a Top 100 “Leader of Tomorrow” by the 54th St. Gallen Symposium from more than 1,000 candidates. Being recognized for interdisciplinary leadership at the intersection of medicine, business, and global health was a great honor. The experience affirmed my commitment to building human-centered, globally scalable health systems and to leading across disciplines rather than within a single silo.

In parallel, my role as assistant concertmaster of the Hopkins Symphony Orchestra deepened my commitment to collaborative leadership and to using music as a medium for empathy and resilience.

What achievement are you most proud of in your professional career? I am most proud of my work designing and implementing an AI-enabled competitive intelligence framework to reshape how senior leadership makes strategic oncology decisions. This project was part of my MBA internship at Eli Lilly and Company. I led over 70 cross-functional stakeholder interviews, translated fragmented data into a scalable, real-time decision framework, and addressed organizational resistance by aligning AI-driven insights with a clear governance and ROI narrative.

This experience marked a turning point in my career: moving from delivering excellence as an individual clinician to enabling better decisions at scale within complex organizations. It crystallized my commitment to building human-centered, data-driven systems that improve health outcomes far beyond any single patient or institution.

Why did you choose this business school? I chose Carey Business School because it uniquely integrates business education with medicine and public health, allowing me to translate clinical insight into scalable health innovation.

Carey’s proximity to Johns Hopkins Medicine and the Bloomberg School of Public Health made it possible to move beyond theoretical strategy and focus on implementation, including how decisions are actually made, governed, and sustained in real health systems.

Who was your favorite MBA professor?  Professor Steven Cohen taught me that effective business communication is not about sounding impressive, but about creating clarity, trust, and momentum in high-stakes settings.

His course, which earned an AACSB Innovations That Inspire Award, fundamentally changed my professional presence. I was able to apply the skills I learned to engage with senior leaders across cultures at the St. Gallen Symposium, the One Young World Summit, and other forums.

What was your favorite course as an MBA? AI and the Business of Health was my favorite course because it reframed how I think about healthcare innovation.

Rather than treating AI as a technical solution, the course emphasized incentives, governance, and adoption, which is why some technologies scale and others fail. I learned to ask not only “Can this work?” but “Who owns the decision, who bears the risk, and who benefits?”

What was your favorite MBA event or tradition at your business school? My favorite tradition was Carey Business School’s Thursday Social Networking event. I made many valuable connections, but I also loved the quality of conversations it fostered.

These gatherings consistently created space for honest, unscripted discussions across industries and programs, reflecting Carey’s culture of accessibility, intellectual curiosity, and substance over status.

What was the most impactful case study you had in business school, and what was the biggest lesson you learned from it? I enjoyed our case about health care AI that highlighted how technically strong solutions can fail when not aligned with incentives and governance. The lesson was clear: in health care, success depends less on algorithms than on system design.

What did you love most about your business school’s town? I love Baltimore’s authenticity. Its openness and strong sense of community make it easy to build genuine relationships, both within and beyond the university. The city’s relaxed vibe, its waterfront and ocean air, and simple pleasures like sharing crab cakes by the harbor give everyday life a warmth and rhythm that make it feel like home.

What business leader do you admire most? I admire leaders who build trust across disciplines and sectors. Those who can create systems that enable others to make better decisions, rather than centralizing authority, are truly inspirational.

What is one way that your business school has integrated AI into your programming? What insights did you gain from using AI? Carey Business School was an early promoter of AI in the classroom. The school moved from discouraging AI use to incorporating it into coursework and encouraging students to experiment with it responsibly. This taught me that AI’s value lies not in replacement, but in augmenting human judgment within well-governed systems.

Which MBA classmate do you most admire? I admire my classmate, Angelica Hall. She consistently bridges perspectives across disciplines and cultures, enabling teams to move forward in moments of uncertainty through empathy and clarity, while also being the vibrant heart of our community’s social cohesion.

What are the top two items on your professional bucket list? First, I want to build a life where professional impact and personal happiness reinforce one another, leading health care transformation while also being present as a partner, family member, and human being. Second, I want to contribute to systems and governance frameworks that help people live healthier and more fulfilling lives in the age of AI, not just patients, but as families and communities.

What made Erika such an invaluable addition to the Class of 2026?  

“Erika Ito is an exceptional MBA student whose intellectual curiosity, humility, and determination distinguish her from her peers. As she navigates a new academic and cultural environment, she has demonstrated remarkable resilience, a genuine openness to feedback, and an unwavering commitment to honing her skills. Erika’s dedication to continuous growth, coupled with the discipline to follow through, distinguishes her as a future leader. I am confident that Erika has an extraordinarily bright future and will drive positive change in both business and public health.”

Steven D. Cohen
Professor of Practice
Johns Hopkins Carey Business School

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