Midori Shimanouchi Lederer, the founder and president of Japanese American Social Services, Inc. (familiarly known as JASSI), likes to be called a volunteer for the agency which has been serving the social service needs of members of the Japanese and Japanese American community in the New York area since 1981.

She came to her present role via a circuitous route which began when in 1943 she came to New York from one of the internment camps in which West Coast Japanese Americans were incarcerated during World War II.

Her professional career as a publicist grew out of her work in the "fifties" for film producer and entrepreneur Michael Todd, whose "Around the World in 80 Days" won an Academy Award. In 1960 she joined the firm Bill Doll & Company to handle publicity for clients such as Federico Fellini, Maurice Cheavalier, Judy Garland, Louis Armstrong, Andre Watts and other prominent artists. For Sears, Roebuck & Company she went to the Nuremberg Toy Fair and the Paris Toy Fair to publicize Silly Putty!

In 1971 she began doing volunteer work for the Lower East Side Center, a drug rehabilitation agency which had a special program for elderly Chinese drug addicts. Eight years later she became a volunteer for Japanese American Help for the Aging. In 1981 she founded JASSI which this year celebrates its 20th year of serving senior citizens, undocumented workers, abused women, non-English-speaking hospital patients and others in need of direct help, advocacy, information and referrals.

With her boundless energy and organizational skills, she built JASSI into the well-respected agency that it now is. In Tokyo she organized JASSI/Japan, comprised of former JASSI volunteers who have returned to Japan and who focus on raising funds for JASSI through bazaars and other special events.

In recognition of her community activism, she has received a number of awards, including the Ellis Island Medal of Honor, an Outstanding Asian Americans Award from Gov. Mario Cuomo, a Justice in Action Award from the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund, and The Order of the Sacred Treasure from the Emperor of Japan.

A member of the board of the Asian American Federation of New York, she has served on the boards of the Methodist Church Home for the Aged and the Japanese American Association of New York.

California-born, Midori has been a New Yorker since 1943. She lives with her husband Peter Lederer in Manhattan and in New Milford, Connecticut.