Giving Back: Columbia Falls grad creates unique scholarship fund

On a sunny afternoon in June of 2008, newly graduated Moyu Harada strode out of Columbia Falls High School with a freshly-minted diploma and a clear vision of leaving Montana to study international business at the University of Washington.

Thirteen years later the successful alumna has returned to help the next generation of Wildcats who wish to study at an institute outside of Montana achieve their dream— through her new $1,000 Sato-Harada Scholarship.

Harada, graduated with a bachelor of arts in business administration from the University of Washington’s Foster School of Business with a focus in finance and a certification of International Studies in Business. She now works as a program manager for CBRE, the largest real estate management company in the world, overseeing the facility management in the western division of 26 large companies such as Starbucks, Microsoft, Facebook and Uber.

Wanting to give back to the Columbia Falls community, Harada created the scholarship this year specifically for students seeking higher education at an out-of-state institution.

Partly motivated by her own experiences, she hopes the fund will help students with the extra costs associated with out-of-state schooling, such as out-of-state tuition, travel expenses and even higher costs of living.

Harada, born in Japan, was raised in West Glacier by her parents Sumio, a local wildlife photographer, and Kumi Harada, but often she would return to Japan, spending much of her summers in Tokyo with her maternal grandparents, the Satos.

“I think for me, being originally from Tokyo, Japan and then living in a small community— I grew up in West Glacier, I went to Columbia Falls, and as much as I loved it— I always knew that I wanted to go to a bigger city and to study international business. And those are things that are hard to do, you know, while staying in Montana, so I think that was a big part of wanting to go out of state,” Harada said.

But when it came to her senior year, she found that some of the opportunities for doing so were limited, including within the realm of local scholarships.

“I actually got a lot of wonderful local scholarships,” she said, “But some of them I had to give back because I wasn’t going to a Montana university.”

Yet choosing to go out of state to a school in a large city like Seattle is what Harada attributes as being instrumental in opening up career opportunities like the one she has now, working for a global company with more than 90,000 employees in over 100 countries.

The Sato-Harada Scholarship, dedicated in honor of her Japanese heritage, is meant to help Columbia Falls graduates seeking

the diversity and opportunities offered by venturing out of state.

The application can be found online at https://cfhighschool.org/ scholarships/ and is due May 7.

The scholarship winner will be announced by Harada at the Seniors Awards Ceremony on Wednesday, May 26.