Voxcali

Electrifying postseason plays as the Chiefs’ primary returner poises Filipino American Nikko Remigio for a stellar second NFL season.

Nikko Remigio is a return specialist and wide receiver for the Kansas City Chiefs entering his second NFL season.

Remigio showed enough promise in his 2024 rookie campaign to secure the kick and punt return responsibilities late in the regular season.  He shone in the playoffs with career long kick and punt returns.

In the divisional round versus the Texans, Remigio took the opening kickoff back 63 yards to set the tone for the Chiefs’ convincing win.

The following week he shook free for a 41-yard punt return to establish great field position for the Chiefs offense in a nail-biting win in the AFC Championship game against the Bills en route to the Super Bowl.

Reports out of KC indicate that Remigio will retain the starting returner jobs for the 2025 season.

As a receiver Remigio has tallied up only 2 catches for 48 yards in a meaningless week 18 game after the Chiefs’ playoff spot was locked up.

But a looming suspension for star wide receiver Rashee Rice and the departure of veteran DeAndre Hopkins, may give Remigio more opportunities to contribute to the passing game with the league’s best quarterback Patrick Mahomes at the helm.

Remigio grew up in Orange, California where he attended football powerhouse Mater Dei.  In his 4 years at Cal the 5’9” speedster scored 7 receiving touchdowns and a kick return TD.  

He transferred to Fresno State for a super senior season and scored 10 total touchdowns, including 2 on punt returns, to earn Second-team Mountain West honors.

In 2023 he went undrafted but was picked up by the Chiefs for an injury-delayed rookie season. Remigio’s mother is half Black and half white and his father is a Filipino American whose family immigrated from the Iloilo and Muntinlupa regions.  During Super Bowl LIX Remigio wore the Filipino flag on his helmet.  He has also worn custom cleats featuring the Philippine sun.

Join us as we explore the lives and times of some of history's most prominent women of Asian and Asian American descent.

Today we take a look at Lisa Su, CEO of AMD (Advanced Micro Devices), TIME Magazine's 2024 CEO of the Year, and one of few S&P 500 female CEO's.

“The biggest risk, is not taking any risk” (CNBC, 2017)

This is a quote from Dr. Lisa Su, CEO of Advanced Micro Devices, better known to the S&P 500 as AMD.

Lisa is known for her vision, grit and willingness to take chances in a field that demands constant evolution. She’s known for taking AMD from a $2-3 billion dollar market capitalization before her CEO-tenure, circa 2014, to more than $200 billion at the end of 2024.

In a position dominated by men, Lisa is a particularly unique study in technical excellence and ambition that has not only reinvigorated AMD’s product line, but has poised it as a worthy David to the Goliath of NVIDIA as it enters the next frontier of AI dominance.

"Hello welcome to Ladies and Legends, the podcast where we explore the personal journeys of legendary women and business leaders of Asian and Asian American descent. I’m your host Juyun, and today’s story is about an American business leader of Taiwanese descent who has become a pre-eminent driving force behind the AI processor race, and has single-handedly taken AMD stock from $3 per share, to $180 per share by building the company’s portfolio of high end computing products.

As a side note, it’s worth mentioning that just 8.2% of CEO’s of S&P 500 companies are women, according to Harvard Law. 

This alone makes AMD unique. 

And as another fun fact, Lisa is first cousins once removed with NVIDIA CEO Jenson Huang, giving the tension between their two companies added dimension.

Let’s explore Lisa Su’s personal journey, her rise through the ranks of the tech world, and the leadership qualities that define her as one of the most world’s most respected CEOs.

Segment 1: Early Life and Education 

Lisa Su was born in Tainan, Taiwan, in 1969 and immigrated to the United States with her parents and brother at the age of 3.  Both her parents came from large families.  Her father had 9 siblings while her mother had 6.  That may be why she didn’t become aware of the Jenson Huang connection until well into her AMD CEO tenure.

“Like many Asian parents, mine were very focused on education. My dad would quiz me with multiplication tables when I was about 5,” (NY Times, 2017)

Her parents, particularly her father, was an accomplished mathematician, and her mother was an accountant and entrepreneur who would start her own business in her 40’s, helping Lisa lean into the entrepreneurial tolerance for risk. 

Growing up in Queens, New York, Lisa was a curious child with an early love for math and science. She was fascinated by how things worked and was constantly disassembling devices just to see if she could put them back together. This included taking apart her brother’s model car when she was 10. 

“I’ve always had a fascination with how things worked for as long as I can remember. When I was a kid, my brother’s remote-controlled car stopped working one day, and I started taking it apart to reconnect the wires and fix it,” she told Texas Academy of Medicine, Engineering, Science and Technology.

She was also a musician before she found her technical passion, and played piano for a decade even auditioning for Julliard where, thank goodness she was turned away or we might not have this titan of tech to talk about. 

In the fall of 1986, Lisa Su enrolled at MIT, choosing to major in Electrical Engineering over Computer Science in part because she deemed it the more difficult choice.

While some of us, myself included, go into university thinking they’ll pursue one thing, and then come out with a degree in a completely different area, some people are laser-focused from the start, a spark of inspiration driving their technical expertise in an area. And that was Lisa.

She earned not only her bachelor's, but also her master's, and Ph.D. in electrical engineering all from MIT.

When obtaining her Ph.D., her doctoral advisors reported that she was “one of the first researchers to look into silicon-on-insulator (SOI) technology, a then unproven technique for increasing transistors’ efficiency by building them atop layers of an insulating material.

Her dissertation was titled, “Extreme-submicrometer silicon-on-insulator (SOI) MOSFETs” (metal oxide semiconductor field-effect transistor).

Pictures of her in this era show a woman with large wire-rimmed glasses, and an easy confidence, the kind that remains elusive to many throughout their careers. 

That said, imagine spending 8 years laser focused on the potential of an emerging technology, not knowing what the future held but having that extreme faith in your work – and in yourself. If we could all tap into that kind of belief, imagine how inspiring we could be to the generations of women that come after us.

Lisa’s focus has almost always been on semiconductor research and manufacturing — the technologies that would become the foundation of her career. She was one of the very few women in her field, but never let that be a limitation.

What really made her stand out was her ability to translate deep technical knowledge into real-world impact.

Segment 2: Building a Career in Tech 

As soon as she graduated with her PhD, in June 1994, Lisa joined Texas Instruments, where she worked for less than a year in the company’s SPDC (Semiconductor Process and Device Center) before moving to IBM where she spent over a decade.

At IBM Lisa held various engineering and leadership roles. One of her most notable achievements was her work in launching copper technology for semiconductor manufacturing. At the time, it was groundbreaking — copper allowed faster chip performance compared to the aluminum used before.

She didn't just work in R&D labs — she led initiatives that changed the direction of the business.

The copper technology launched in 1998 resulted in chips that were 20% faster than conventional versions.  Imagine the first mover advantage this gave IBM!

At the time it put them ahead of Intel and others at least a year or two in manufacturing technology and the advantage of being 20% faster and cooler running helped them win valuable contracts with high performance computing clients.

And ultimately IBM licensed the copper process to companies like AMD, making it the industry standard.  Its licensing model produced a steady stream of revenue for IBM in addition to those from its own chips.

This tremendous success catapulted Lisa into the executive spotlight after a year as technical assistant to then IBM CEO Lou Gerstner.  Lisa won promotion to head and founder of IBM’s Emerging Products Division which began with a focus on biochips.   

In layman’s terms biochips are unique in that they are basically miniature labs that can host large numbers of simultaneous biochemical reactions.  While traditional silicon chips are made of mostly silicon and metallic layers, biochips are made of silicon coated in specialized fluids or biological markers. 

The input here are biological samples with the output being data on those samples. This has natural applications in medicine, DNA sequencing, detecting toxins, and others.

The other area of focus for this emerging products division, was “low-power and broadband semiconductors”.  The group’s first product was a microprocessor that improved battery life in phones and other handheld devices.

This is when the accolades began piling up, and Lisa’s name became known and respected in her field.  MIT Technology Review named her a “Top Innovator Under 35” in 2001 due in part to her work with this group.

Her time at IBM revealed three things that would become core to her leadership style:

In 2007 she joined Freescale Semiconductor as CTO and helped pivot the company toward a more efficient product roadmap and improved profitability. Her track record of turning around performance was gaining attention.

But her real test — and opportunity — came in 2012, when she joined AMD.

Segment 3: A Note About Her Personal Life

Before getting into the meat-and-potatoes of what Lisa is known for, I want to touch upon her personal life because I find this sort of peripheral information fascinating. 

It’s hard to be everything to everyone — husband, parents, children, and in this case, stockholders, all at once.  I wanted to add a personal dimension to her story.  Unfortunately there isn’t much information that can be reliably sourced.

From what is available publicly, Lisa is married to a man named Daniel Lin and resides with him in Austin.  AMD has significant operations there, despite being headquartered in Santa Clara.

I also tried to find a quote from her on domestic life, but for all the things she has said about business, her strengths as a leader, her impatience as a potential weakness, could find nothing about her husband.   It’s generally thought they do not have kids.

I did find a Reddit thread saying she drives a Porsche 911 Turbo S, with a vanity plate that says, “epyc” with a “y”, at least as of two years ago.

And I did find an interview that said her favorite thing to eat at home is her husband’s ribs. Behind every successful woman is a good man.

Segment 4: The AMD Turnaround 

When Lisa Su joined AMD in 2012 as Senior Vice President the company was struggling. It was losing market share to Intel, its stock price was plummeting, and internally, there was a lack of focus.

In 2014, just two years later, Lisa was named CEO — the first woman to lead a major semiconductor company. Her appointment was historic.

“I felt like I was in training for the opportunity to do something meaningful in the semiconductor industry,” she said. “And AMD was my shot.”

A quick note on what AMD does. At the time its product line was diverse but unfocused, with no segment in which it completely outshine the competition. AMD’s main revenue driver was the x86 CPU’s for desktops and laptops which competed directly with Intel. At the time its flagship CPU line underperformed Intel’s offerings in both performance and power efficiency.

They had other products like GPU’s for gaming PC’s and workstations, and semi-custom chips made mainly for game consoles like Sony PlayStation 4 and Microsoft Xbox One. They dabbled in other areas that didn’t deliver well for them.  Interestingly, while their CPU’s weren’t as coveted, their GPUs were technically competitive with Nvidia, but lacked the marketing and software ecosystem to deliver big returns.

In short, AMD was in deep trouble. At the time the stock was trading around $3 per share and the diverse product line suffered from lower performance for various reasons.

Lisa began by focusing on creating great products, deepening customer trust and simplifying internal operations. By 2022 AMD was worth more than Intel in both market value and annual revenue. 

How did she do this?

By focusing on core competencies that had higher performance, higher pricepoints, and higher margins. 

Pre-tenure, AMD focused on products that went into low-, and mid-range PC CPUs.  Now its high performance Zen architecture (Ryzen, Threadripper, EPYC) lets it go head-to-head with Intel.  For GPU’s AMD aggressively narrowed the efficiency gap flowing from less robust supporting software ecosystems with its current push to unify its RDNA and CDNA architectures into a single unified platform for both gaming and data center applications with the goal of mimicking NVIDIA’s CUDA, a parallel computing platform and programming model — a step toward exploiting the processing power of quantum computing.

In short Lisa re-focused the company’s goals on fewer areas with greater profitability.  This continues to be the case, with an R&D approach focused on 2 to 3 areas as opposed to several.

She has said, it’s all about the long game.

“When you invest in a new area, it is a five- to 10-year arc to really build out all of the various pieces,” Lisa says, “the thing about our business is, everything takes time.”

It’s been a quick turnaround but a long road extends ahead of her.

In 2024 NVIDIA’s R&D budget was about twice AMD’s, meaning that for the foreseeable future, AMD will need to pick and choose its battlegrounds. 

But if Lisa is good at one thing, it’s strategy. And she refuses to be pigeonholed as the scrappy challenger.

“My view of AMD is that we have a tremendous set of technology assets, people, capability, customer relationships. We're not going to define ourselves in somebody else's shadow,” she has said.

In 2024 she was named CEO of the Year by Time Magazine.

“Hope is not a strategy,” Lisa has said, “execution is.”

Lisa’s quiet confidence and stay-the-course faith in steady forward progress has been a beacon in a vertical quick to reward the next hot new idea.

Under Lisa Su’s leadership, AMD's stock has soared by over 3,000%. The company has gone from underdog to powerhouse, competing with giants like Intel, NVIDIA, and Qualcomm — and often winning.

She’s received multiple awards, including being named to Forbes’ World’s 100 Most Powerful Women and Fortune’s Businessperson of the Year.

But ask Lisa what she's most proud of? She’ll likely say building a team that believes in the mission.

While normally I like to share quotes others have used to describe our heroine, in this case I’ll defer to those from Lisa herself.

She has said, among other things:

“Run toward the hardest problems. This approach has helped me to learn a tremendous amount from both success and failure.”

It should be noted that for the full 2024 fiscal year, Nvidia reported $115.2 billion in revenue in its data center segment — where most AI computing happens.  AMD reported $12.6 billion for data centers in the same time period.

This is a vast differential that even the most ambitious leadership and focused goals in R&D may never fully bridge.

That said, Lisa Su’s journey from a curious child in Queens to a global tech leader is a testament to the power of clarity, resilience, and leadership with depth.

Thanks for listening to today’s episode of Ladies and Legends. Whether you admire her grit, her steady hand, or her vision most, one thing is clear some people are guided by a deep internal belief in not only what they do, but who they are at their core. And that should be what we all strive for in our individual goals for personal excellence.

Be sure to follow the show, leave a review, and share this episode if you enjoyed it. I’m Juyun, and I’ll catch you next time on “Ladies and Legends."

China produces over 70% of the world’s EVs.

China is completely dominating the electric car race with one out of every two new cars sold being electric. In 2024 12.4 million electric cars were produced in China which made up for over 70% of global EV production. And today about two thirds of electric vehicles worldwide are sold in China, clearly cementing its place in the revolution.

No other country comes close to China’s EV scene and here’s why:

Thanks to mass production and the government’s support, EVs are much cheaper. Some cost as little as $4,300 making it an affordable vehicle for everyday citizens. The Wuling Hongguang Mini EV starts around $5,000 and one of China’s top selling EVs’, the Seagull, base model is priced at $9,800. Along with great pricing, the cities are loaded with charging stations and the country’s goals to become completely electric are pushing drivers away from gas vehicles.

One of the most convenient aspects about owning an EV in China is the battery swap stations where you can pull in and get a fully charged battery in minutes. Chinese EV company, Nio, currently operates 3,000 of the country’s 3,500 swap stations and battery manufacturer, CATL, plans to have 10,000 swap stations by 2028, which would be enough to serve a million cars every day.

The biggest name in the market right now is BYD as it sold over 4.2 million cars last year surpassing Tesla in sales volume as the world’s number one EV producer. BYD is currently building a ship fleet to transport cars internationally and they plan to have 8 large vessels that can hold up to 7,000 vehicles each by the beginning of 2026.

Chinese EV manufacturers are no longer staying within their borders as they begin to take over international markets. BYD just recently outsold Tesla in Europe and is currently the top EV exporter there and in Brazil BYD sold over 56,000 cars so far this year.

By 2035 China is set for all new cars to be “new energy vehicles” meaning gas-powered cars could eventually become old news on Chinese roads. With low-cost EVs, futuristic technology, and government policies aiming for a cleaner future, they are shaping the EV scene all around the world.

China is sitting in the driver’s seat of the world’s auto industry and if the future of driving truly is electric, then China is already miles ahead.

Former Tottenham Hotspur star Son Heung-min makes a blockbuster transfer to MLS’s LAFC, changing the league landscape.

At age 33 Son Heung-min has already achieved a level of international success considered by many to be the greatest of any Asian player in soccer history.

Son carved out his landmark success during a decade in the Premier League with Tottenham Hotspur, becoming the first Asian player to score 100 goals.  He is the fifth highest all-time scorer for the club. In the 2021-22 season he became the first Asian player to win the Premier League Golden Boot with 23 goals.

Son won the FIFA Puskás Award – awarded to the player who scored the most beautiful goal – for his incredible solo play against Burnley in 2019 in which he covered the entire length of the field dribbling past multiple opposing players.

In May 2025 Son captained Tottenham Hotspur to a victory in the UEFA Europa League final, the club’s first major trophy since 2008.

Over his Tottenham career Son totaled earnings of over $74 million, with his most recent extension putting his annual earnings at just under $10 million, the club’s highest-paid player.

At the height of his Premier League success Son opted to leave in the final year of his contract for Major League Soccer’s LAFC in which his new club footed a record $26.5 million transfer fee.  His two-year contract with the team is estimated at $13 million per year, making him the league’s highest paid player behind the legendary Lionel Messi.

Son made his debut with LAFC on August 9th in Chicago where the away crowd welcomed him to the MLS with a standing ovation, something he noted would never happen in the Premier League.

A native of South Korea, Son moved to Germany at 16 to join Hamburger SV and made his Bundesliga debut in 2010.  Over six years, combined with his time with Hamburger SV and Bayer Leverkusen, Son scored 41 goals.

Son has represented South Korea at the World Cup in 2014, 2018, and 2022 and is the country’s all-time leading scorer with three goals. In 2018 his nation took home the gold medal in the Asian Games.  Son has scored 51 total international goals. Son is fluent in both German and English in addition to his native Korean.

These five AAPI-owned brands are redefining style and making their mark in today’s fashion industry. 

These are 5 fashion brands that are bringing fresh energy to the scene and are AAPI owned. 

Number 5: Azalea Wang

This brand is known for its bold statement shoes and flashy designs. Founder Erikka Wang launched Azalea Wang in Chicago and it is a perfect choice for anyone into fearless fashion.

Number 4: Mac Duggal

If you’re looking for a gorgeous gown for any fancy occasion Mac Duggal is a go-to for that glamorous look. Duggal’s designs have become a staple in the world of evening wear with stunning details and sparkle. 

Number 3: Sandy Liang

Based in New York City, designer Sandy Liang mixes sweet nostalgia with modern edginess. Known for its whimsical pieces this brand is a favorite for those looking for playful fashion that is still sophisticated. 

Number 2: JW Pei

Husband and wife duo Yang Pei and Stephanie Li developed JW PEI into a vegan leather handbag brand in Los Angeles. The minimalist designs and affordable pricing caught the attention of fashionistas worldwide and is now a global it-girl brand without a thousand dollar price tag.  

Number 1: PH5

Founded by Wei Lin along with creative director Zoe Champion, PH5 was established in New York as a stylish knitwear brand that is not afraid to push boundaries. Dedicated to reimagining knitwear pieces, PH5 has those futuristic designs that scream artistic and edgy.

Iyo Sky brought her talent from Japan to the biggest wrestling stage in the world, evolving into one of WWE’s most fearless and record-breaking superstars. 

Iyo Sky is one of WWE’s most entertaining, high flying superstars and she is rising to fame making world wrestling history.

She was born Masami Odate in Kamakura, Japan and since she was a little girl Iyo had dreams of stepping into the ring. When she was just 16 years old, Iyo debuted as a tag team wrestler duo along with her sister as Io and Mio Shirai in Japan’s independent wrestling scene.

Iyo and her sister were later a part of a group called the Triple Tails along with Kana, who is now better known as WWE Superstar Asuka, and this trio quickly became a crowd favorite. After being together for 15 months, Iyo decided to break out of the Triple Tails and begin her solo career.

World Wonder Ring Stardom is one of Japan’s best professional women’s wrestling promotions and is where Io Shirai called home for the next few years. She was given the name the “ace” of Stardom as she was two-time World Champion of Stardom, six-time Artist of Stardom Champion, one-time Goddess of Stardom Champion and High Speed Champion, inaugural SWA World Champion, and the brand’s very first Grand Slam Champion.

In 2018 Io Shirai announced that she was taking her career to the WWE and made her debut at the 2018 Mae Young Classic tournament where she made it to the finals before being defeated by Toni Storm.

Her first NXT appearance was only a few months later when she and her friend, Kairi Sane, won a tag team match and since then Io Shirai completely dominated. She obtained both the NXT Women’s Championship and the NXT Women’s Tag Team Titles before making her debut on WWE’s main roster as Iyo Sky at SummerSlam 2022.

In 2023 she literally climbed her way to the top by capturing the Money in the Bank briefcase in a ladder match that secured the winner a championship match at any time. Iyo cashed in her briefcase to compete against Bianca Belair where she would go on to win the WWE Women’s Championship.

Now in 2025 Iyo Sky’s momentum just continues to grow. In March she made wrestling history again by becoming WWE’s tenth Women’s Triple Crown Champion and the seventh Women’s Grand Slam Champion. She was also the first Japanese wrestler to achieve Grand Slam status in both the U.S. and Japan, meaning all active titles have been captured in both countries.

In April 2025 at Wrestlemania 41 Iyo Sky conquered all odds and solidified her name as the first Japanese woman to win a match at Wrestlemania, which is like the Super Bowl of wrestling. She defeated Bianca Belair and Rhea Ripley to retain the Women’s World Championship in an electrifying match that had everyone on their feet.

Her breathtaking maneuvers and fearless ring style has put Iyo Sky on top in the United States and Japan. With historic moments and a long list of championship wins, Iyo is inspiring fans worldwide as she was once a teenage prodigy in Japan and now, the Genius of the Sky on the biggest of wrestling stages.

Japanese American internment spurred Minami and Tamaki's half century crusade for personal rights.

Dale Minami and Donald Tamaki are co-founders of Minami Tamaki LLP, a San Francisco-based law firm founded in 1975.

The firm is best known for its role in helping overturn the conviction of Fred Korematsu who was convicted for refusing to obey the government’s order to be incarcerated along with nearly 120,000 Japanese Americans during World War II.  The conviction had initially been upheld by the Supreme Court in 1944.  Upon uncovering documents proving that government officials had knowingly used false evidence, Minami and Tamaki successfully petitioned the U.S. District Court in 1983 to vacate Korematsu’s conviction.

The case was personal as both Minami and Tamaki are the children of Nisei whose parents were victims of the WWII Japanese American internment.

In the 2017 case Trump v. Hawaii, which challenged the Trump administration’s travel ban, Tamaki was part of the legal team that filed an amicus brief filed on behalf of the children of three Japanese American men, including Korematsu, who famously defied the WWII-era incarceration orders.

Tamaki also took part in other litigation concerning the rights of Asian Americans, including a class action lawsuit against the San Francisco Police Department citing unlawful arrests, a class-action employment lawsuit against California Blue Shield, and a case that resulted in the granting of tenure to a UCLA professor after an initial denial.

Minami Tamaki LLP has also secured multimillion-dollar settlements and recoveries for personal injury cases.  One is a $7 million settlement for the family of a woman killed by a bus.  Another is a $4.5 million trial verdict for a client who suffered a stroke after a performer’s stage dive.

Minami, 78, grew up in Gardena, California.  He earned a bachelor of arts in political science from USC in 1968 and a JD from UC Berkeley in 1971. Tamaki, 74, is an Oakland native who received both his bachelor of arts and law degrees from Cal in 1973 and 1976.

With high profile clients like Drake, Beyonce and Kanye West, Johnny Dang is the King of Bling with his multi-million dollar empire.

You may have spotted him on celebrities' Instagram posts or you may have even heard his name in rap songs. Johnny Dang is the ‘King of Bling’ and his diamonds have turned him into a global sensation.

Johnny was born and raised in South Vietnam where his father and grandfather immersed him into the jewelry business. In 1996, when Johnny was 23 years old his family emigrated to the United States. 9 years before then his father was a soldier in the Vietnam war and escaped by boat to Texas.

After his family reunited, Johnny immediately began working at the jewelry repair store his father opened up in Houston. Since the jewelry market was much bigger in the States, he quickly picked up on American styles and techniques that were being used. By 1998 Johnny opened up his own store front called TV Jewelry in the Sharpstown Mall in Houston.

Later in the 2000s Johnny broke into the hip hop scene with the help of rapper Paul Wall when he discovered his ability to make grills. As grills became more desired in hip hop culture, Johnny’s grill styles became extremely popular and to this day his partnership with Paul Wall blossoms. He was even featured on a single in 2023 titled ‘Johnny Dang’.

Johnny ensures to create new and unique ideas for each grill he designs, adding to the hype around his reputation. Whether you were looking for a diamond-encrusted watch or a multi-colored grill, Johnny Dang will make sure it is one-of-a-kind.

He was the music industry’s go-to jeweler as he has some of the biggest names like Justin Bieber, Beyonce, and Kanye West, wearing his jewels. Multiple artists have shouted out Johnny Dang in their songs popularizing him even more as the ‘Jeweler to the Stars’.

Today Johnny is still running his jewelry empire in Houston and has an estimated net worth of around $15-25 million. As a Vietnamese immigrant who came to the United States and had to start over from the bottom, his story embodies true heart and hustle.

Johnny built his legacy out of a flea market, putting Vietnamese American representation in an industry where it was never visible and Johnny Dang & Co. will continue to shine with their loyal clientele and millions of international fans.

An Asian-founded health food store in Boston has become Josephine Antoci’s Los Angeles wellness empire with over $171 million in annual profits.

There’s a healthy lifestyle wave taking over Los Angeles, California with cold pressed juices, luxury smoothies, organic everything and there’s one name at the center of it all. Erewhon. It’s not just a grocery store, it has become a high status symbol and a new way of living life. 

Erewhon’s story does not begin in LA, but in Boston back in 1966. Japanese couple Aveline and Michio Kushi founded a small organic food store with a mission to bring whole organic foods to the United States way before “eating clean” was a trend. 

In 1969 the Kushis expanded their vision west to the Fairfax District in Los Angeles which is currently Erewhon’s oldest operating store. This location became one of the country’s very first organic grocery stores but it did not meet the Kushi’s expectations. 

By the 80s expansion stopped and the brand was purchased from bankruptcy by a former employee. In 2011 the Fairfax store was the only Erewhon left standing and it was acquired at an undisclosed amount by Tony and Josephine Antoci. 

Josephine is a Taiwanese-American entrepreneur and she took charge as President when she saw the potential Erewhon’s roots had. As the company’s chief tastemaker, Antoci became extremely involved in the product selection, only putting items on shelves that met her standards. Her particular taste and commitment to quality became the foundation of Erewhon’s identity. 

Not only was she prioritizing health and wellness, but also the shopping experience. She transformed the isles into eye-catching displays that featured the most premium produce and high-end supplements. Antoci even expanded the cafe to offer outstanding hot meals, specialty lattes, and of course, the viral $20 celebrity smoothies. 

With this new leadership and trending concepts, Erewhon became a cultural phenomenon. It’s a place for celebrity sightings, getting a Hailey Bieber smoothie after a morning pilates class, and signaling your wellness lifestyle and exquisite taste. 

By 2023 Erewhon proved to have evolved from a struggling store in the wellness industry to reportedly generating $171.4 million in profit. In 12 years Josephine Antoci’s curation has become one of the most profitable organic grocers in the country. 

Today Erewhon operates 10 different stores across Los Angeles with the Fairfax location still being an iconic stop in the city. They are currently looking to expand even more with three stores scheduled to open later this year in Thousand Oaks, West Hollywood, and Glendale. 

With humble beginnings as an Asian-founded health food store out of Boston to the rebirth of the brand under Josephine Antoci, Erewhon has redefined grocery shopping in LA. It’s no longer just a place to buy food — it’s a community hub that symbolizes the city’s health conscious lifestyle that’s driven by trends and the influence of this wellness empire is showing no signs of slowing down. 

Revolutionary gene-editing techniques developed by David Liu allows treatment of diseases arising from genetic defects.

David Liu has advanced gene-editing technology with groundbreaking work in base editing and prime editing.  He has developed highly precise tools to correct the DNA “misspellings” that cause diseases.

Developed in 2016 by Liu’s team at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, base editing acts as a “chemical surgeon” correcting single-letter DNA mutations which make up a third of all known genetic diseases.  Base editing has been used to correct sickle-cell disease and has shown promising results in clinical trials for treating T-cell leukemia.  In 2022 a 13-year-old with T-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia became the first patient to receive base-edited cell therapy, achieving cancer remission within 28 days.

Prime editing which acts as a “search and replace” was introduced by Liu’s lab in 2019.  The technique allows insertion or deletion of small stretches of DNA, enabling correction of a wider range of genetic mutations than base editing.

These technologies have been translated into clinical applications through companies Liu co-founded, including Beam Therapeutics, Prime Medicine, and Editas Medicine.

The development of base and prime editing treatments has earned Liu numerous awards.  Most recently he won the 2025 Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences which came with a $3 million check.

Liu is an investigator with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and a professor at the Broad Institute and Harvard University where he began teaching at the age of 26.

Liu graduated Valedictorian from Harvard with a bachelor of arts in chemistry in 1994 and earned a doctorate of organic chemistry from Berkeley in 1999.

The 52-year-old was born and raised in Riverside, California by parents who emigrated from Taiwan. Liu’s father is an aerospace engineer and his mother is a retired physics professor at UC Riverside. In his youth, Liu was the lead tester of the video game Way of the Warrior and was a professional Street Fighter II player.  At age 21 he was banned from some casinos for using his math skills to win at blackjack.