Patric Sawada (澤田)

I married into a Japanese family (澤田), which gave me a perspective on Japan-Europe business that most consultants read about in textbooks. That firsthand experience shapes everything I do, from how I approach market entry to how I read the subtleties of business relationships across Europe and East Asia.

I started my career as Marketing Manager at Ciber, a global IT consulting firm, where I managed international marketing campaigns across Luxembourg, Germany, and France. It was there that I first developed expertise in GDPR compliance consulting, years before it became a mainstream concern. From there, I moved into growth leadership roles at several scale-ups, building and leading teams that drove measurable revenue growth across multiple markets.

In 2018, I completed the Growth Tribe programme — the experimentation-driven growth methodology I still apply to every engagement. That same rigour led me to publish on Frankwatching, the Netherlands' leading marketing platform, where I've written about topics including China's PIPL privacy law and its implications for European businesses.

As an accredited expert with the EU-Japan Centre for Industrial Cooperation, I regularly speak at webinars helping European companies understand the Japanese market. Through their Market Access programme I delivered the “Cross-Cultural Growth Marketing for Japan” webinar to Polish and Czech SMEs in June 2025 and to Swedish SMEs in September 2025. I founded Silkdrive to bring together everything I'd learned, combining growth marketing expertise with genuine cross-cultural intelligence to help companies expand internationally with confidence.