Mark & Mary Devlin

Mark & Mary Devlin44 posts

Mark and Mary Devlin are media entrepreneurs. After studying engineering in Scotland, they moved to Japan in 1989. In 1993 they started handing out a four-page classified ads sheet on Tokyo streets. Over 14 years that sheet grew into Metropolis, Japan’s No 1 English Magazine. In 2000 they founded japantoday.com, the No. 1 news and discussion site about Japan in English. In 2007 Mark & Mary sold their businesses and moved to the United States where they opened Kroaky’s, a private karaoke room business. In 2014 they launched Newslines, an innovative news timeline site, which was followed by NewsBlocks, a blockchain-based marketplace for news data. In June 2020 they launched The Majority to fight back against Nationalism in Scotland. They have two children and live in Glasgow.

Jan 2016

Return to Scotland

Moves Country

After 26 years overseas — 18 in Japan and eight in the United States — The Devlins return to Scotland to live.

7 Oct, 1989

Move to Japan

Moves Country

With little job opportunity in Scotland, Mark goes to Japan and initially works as an English teacher and an editor of financial reports before working as a Network Administrator for Jardine Fleming Securities.
After working while at University for Ford as a management trainee, Mary joins Andersen Consulting, where she is a Strategy Consultant. On arriving in Tokyo in 1990 she works as an IT Consultant for Union Bank of Switzerland.

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