Reiko OKUTANI President, The R Company (Japan) Born in 1950, Reiko Okutani has a law degree from Konan University. In 1982, she launched The R Company, a temporary personnel agency supplying corporate clients with interpreters and secretaries. When her husband opposed the idea, she split up with him. "Japanese women are highly educated and have great potential," she says. "But they have not been able to succeed at work because of poor opportunities." So Okutani decided to create her own opportunities and forge the way for other women. With 75 full-time staff, 73 trainers and 22,514 women on its rolls, The R Company today has an annual turnover of over $37 million. In addition to providing temporary female workers, the agency trains clients' employees and offers consultation on business strategies. Blunt and outspoken, Okutani, now 57, often encounters disapproval from senior business leaders, whose concept of women is limited to, in her words, "wives and other women who exist to serve them." Okutani has little patience for such men. At a meeting to discuss "Japan in the 21st Century," she looked around and saw that all the other participants were old men. She told them, "There's no use holding a discussion here, because you'll all be gone early in the next century," and left the room. She is more optimistic about male leaders of her generation, who she feels are more liberal-minded and less authoritarian: "When these contemporary businessmen rise to the top - say, by 2010 - things will be very different." No doubt Okutani will help usher in the new era. "She is certainly a pioneer among female entrepreneurs, but I see her as an inspiring figure regardless of her gender," says Higuchi Hirotaro, honorary chairman of Asahi Breweries and a respected business leader. For now, Okutani devotes her considerable energy not only to her business but to her non-business interests, which include Japanese dancing and collecting kimonos. "You live your life only once," she says, "and you are wasting it unless you do what you really want to do with it."