Asian Tech Leaders

Qiaojia Li is the CEO and Co-Founder at Rosecut - a wealth management platform to help you access the knowledge and advice you need to plan for the future you want. Prior to starting Rosecut, Qiaojia was a private wealth manager at Credit Suisse and Coutts in London. She started her career in Mergers & Acquisitions in Asia and earned her MBA at the London Business School (where we were classmates!).

In this episode, you will learn about how Qiaojia's mother's life as an entrepreneur inspired her to create Rosecut, how her company democratizes financial planning tools previously only available to the super rich, and her advice for those considering an MBA.

Learn more about Rosecut at https://rosecut.com/

Lyn Chen is the Co-founder and COO at LayerCI: a Y Combinator backed platform that helps developers review and publish code faster and better. Prior to co-founding LayerCI, Lyn was the co-founder and CEO of a food tech company, Candy Cutlery. In the episode, I chat with Lyn about her passion for power lifting, what her experience as an entrepreneur taught her about mental health, and why finding a co-founder is like dating. Happy listening and thank you, Lyn, for joining!

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Professor Ellen Wu is the Associate Professor in the Department of History at Indiana University Bloomington and Director of the Asian American Studies Program. She is the author of the book “The Color of Success: Asian Americans and the Origins of the Model Minority”. Her commentary has been featured by a number of outlets including the Los Angeles Times, Washington Post and NPR. Professor Wu obtained a PhD in History from the University of Chicago, and an M.A. at UCLA.

I really enjoyed this conversation with Professor Wu and I highly recommend you read her book, The Color of Success. In the book, Professor Wu does a superb job of weaving together the complex and changing attitudes towards Asian immigrants in the United States from the 1800s when Asians were outcasts of society to the mid-20th century when they were labelled the “model minority”.

In this episode you will learn about:

Especially in light of all the social injustice that is happening in the world right now, I believe it is more important that ever to better appreciate the arc of Asian Americans in history to recognize our privilege and be emboldened to bring more equality in the world.

Follow Professor Wu on Twitter: @ellendwu

Buy Professor Wu's book, The Color of Success at your favorite bookstore: https://press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9780691168029/the-color-of-success

Jiaqi Pan is the CEO and Founder of Landbot - a no-code chatbot platform that empowers businesses to acquire, engage and monetize customers in messaging channels. Landbot has over 50,000 customers including Uber, L’Oreal and LG. Prior to founding Landbot in 2017, JIA-CHEE was the CEO and founder of Helloumi - a B2C messaging platform for businesses to engage with their customers. In this episode, I chat with Jiaqi about his journey from China to Spain when he was young, how Iron Man and Robert Kiyosaki inspired his career path, and why being Chinese in Spain has its advantages.

Buck Gee is a pioneer in helping to improve Asian representation in business and technology.  

Buck retired in 2008 from Cisco Systems, where he was Vice President and General Manager of the Data Center Business Unit. He joined Cisco with its 2004 acquisition of Andiamo Systems where Mr. Gee was President and CEO. In 2010, he co-founded the Advanced Leadership Program for Asian American Executives, an executive education program at the Stanford Graduate School of Business; and he is also a co-founder of the Corporate Executive Initiative, a national network of Asian American executives. 

He teaches executive leadership workshops for Ascend, a pan-Asian professional organization. He is a board member of the Angel Island Immigration Station Foundation and co-chair of the Donor Advisory Board of Silicon Valley Community Foundation. Mr. Gee is a co-founding board member of the Chinese American Community Foundation and serves on the board of Ascend/Northern California, the advisory board of the Asia Society/Northern California, and the advisory board of the Asian Pacific American Leadership Institute. 

Previously, he held management positions in engineering, marketing, and business development at Hewlett Packard, National Semiconductor, 3Com, Crescendo Communications, Com21, and Iospan Wireless. He has also taught computer and electrical engineering courses at Stanford University and Howard University. He holds BS and MS degrees in electrical engineering from Stanford University and an MBA from the Harvard Business School. 

On this episode, I chat with Buck about how his upbringing as one of the few Asians in his community shaped his life, the one thing that has motivated him throughout his career, and the top skill that Asians need to develop to be more successful in their career. 

If you are interested in learning more about Buck's pioneering work be sure to check out: 

Dr. Joseph Choi is the Co-Founder and COO of Hypercare - a platform for clinicians to securely communicate and locate each other quickly and effectively. Dr. Choi is also an Emergency Physician in Toronto and an Assistant Professor at the University of Toronto's medical school. Dr. Choi earned his Master of Public Health at Harvard and earned his MD at the University of Toronto. In this episode, I chat with Dr. Choi about what he's seeing in the field regarding COVID-19, how technology is helping solve today's healthcare problems, and how his curiosity as a child led him to pursue a career in medicine. Also, since I was recording this from home you may hear my two kids in the background :)

Hanmin Yang is the CEO and Founder of Alike - a dating app for the modern North American Asian that celebrates our identity, culture and story as told by us.  On this episode of Asian Tech Leaders, I chat with Hanmin about his upbringing as a Korean immigrant to Canada, how his background in film helps him in creating a tech product, and the importance of mental health as an entrepreneur. 

Mikael Cho is the Co-Founder and CEO of Unsplash, a crowd-sourced photo service platform with over 300 million users and over 1 million free high-resolution photos.  Founded in 2013 as a humble Tumblr blog, Unsplash has grown into an industry-leading visual community. It’s become a source of inspiration for everyone from award-winning writers like Deepak Chopra to industry-titans like Apple, and millions of creators worldwide. On this episode I chat with Mikael about growing up in a small town in Wisconsin, how career shadowing in college helped him figure out what to do with his career, and what it is like to co-found a company with your significant other. Hope you enjoy this episode and this wraps up our last podcast of 2019 - see you in 2020 :) 

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