Robert Shatz was born in St. Louis and came to Tucson in 1977 to study Oriental Studies (Japan, China, India) at the University of Arizona. He graduated with a Masters of International Management (Japan/Marketing) from the Thunderbird School of Global Management in 1982 and moved to Japan to live for five years.  He studied at the Trade Research Center of the Ministry of International Trade and Industry, and  he taught English in the sister city, Suwa, Nagano for the first two years.  Robert then worked as a translator in the Investment Research Department for Nomura Securities in Tokyo for the next three years.  He transferred to  the Los Angeles Branch as an Institutional Research Broker and conducted over 100 transactions valued at over $1 billion in four years until he resigned in 1991.  He raised his infant and toddler with his wife for four years in California, and then they moved to Tucson in 1995.

Robert has established a non-profit focusing on sustainable economic development for Arizona called Innovative Technologies Development Center where he works as Chief Operating Officer.  The sister, for-profit management consulting firm is called Next Move LLC, and he is a Managing Member.  He continues to find Asian investors for American ventures as Chief Executive Officer of Flex International Ltd.

Robert became a volunteer for Tucson Meet Yourself in 1996, he became its Treasurer in 1999, its President in 2003, and its treasurer again in 2009.  Robert has been volunteering his cross-cultural, fund raising, team building, service minded, and critical thinking skills to the organization for 15 years.  And his boys, Nathan and Andrew, and his wife, Marcie, have volunteered all the years along with Robert at the festival.