My path has never been linear, but it has always been driven by curiosity and a sense that things can be made better. I grew up as an only child in suburban Connecticut, spending long hours building LEGO worlds, tinkering in our attic, and running through the woods with our Jack Russells. I was a late bloomer physically, academically, and socially, but I developed an early habit of quietly observing how things worked, and how they could work better.

My worldview changed dramatically during my gap year when I deferred my acceptance to McGill University and bought a one-way ticket to China at 18. I flew to Beijing with nothing but savings from two summer jobs, some high school Mandarin skills, and the address of an alum who had a couch for me to stay on. I eventually found work in Guangzhou teaching English to adults at an American multinational, and for a few months I immersed myself in teaching, the city and its language.

I was invited to some of my students’ hometowns during the Spring Festival holiday. In each, I saw landscapes where green fields, blue rivers, and clear skies had been replaced by factories, brown water, and air so polluted you could see and taste it. Grandparents in the villages told me how the river that now ran thick and sour once held fish and swimming children - now, no one dared even stick a toe in. Incidences of respiratory disease and cancer were on the rise in the village. Those conversations ignited something inside me. I quit teaching, returned to Beijing, and spent the rest of the year working for an environmental NGO.

That year was the catalyst for my environmental awakening and set the foundation for my long-term mission: contributing to a healthier, more sustainable, and more equitable world.

The second major turning point came many years later, while I was on a creative writing fellowship at NYU Shanghai. I had been writing science fiction and studying human behavior and had been developing a strong desire to build things, not just imagine them. After conversations with friends and mentors, I started auditing Computer Science 101 at NYU Shanghai, befriended the TA, and realized how much one could build with just a laptop and a curious mind. I committed to becoming a software engineer despite having almost no technical background (I still typed with two fingers), learning as much as I could from the TA and the course material, as well from as my nerdiest fellowship colleague, an astrophysics PhD student who knew his way around a computer. I also started going to startup pitch and demo events in Shanghai.

At the end of the fellowship, I picked up my life in Shanghai and moved to San Francisco, the obvious place to learn more about startups and software engineering. I spent almost all my savings on a foundational computer science course at UC Berkeley, CS61A, plus a 3-month 6-day-a-week 12-hour-a-day full-stack immersive software bootcamp called Hack Reactor. It was one of the toughest periods of my life: long nights studying CS fundamentals, experiencing feverish dreams about recursion, rebuilding my typing ability from scratch (20-80 WPM), enduring constant failure, and rewiring how I learned. But it opened the world of technology for me and solidified my belief in the power of a growth mindset combined with hard work.

I'm an explorer: I’ve lived, studied, and worked in ten of the world’s most dynamic cities, from Shanghai and Nairobi to Montreal and New York City. I’ve co-founded companies, shipped products end-to-end, built hardware–software systems, led teams, raised venture capital, and created art and communities along the way. I see design, engineering, and entrepreneurship as tools for shaping a better future: systems that support biodiversity, human flourishing, connection, and creativity.

A warm embrace, a cute dog, a sweet cat, a good sci-fi book, a spicy Indian or Thai meal, a long run along the water, a walk with a friend through a park, efficient public transit, bicycles, dancing at any time of the day, human-friendly design, clean water, snorkeling off the beach, the warmth of a bonfire on a cool night, cooking with friends.