Asian Tech Leaders

In light of the recent rise in Anti-Asian Hate Crimes we dedicated this podcast to learning more about the importance of mental health within the Asian American Pacific Islander (AAPI) community. I was delighted to spend time on the podcast with Marcia Liu, Ph. D. who is a Licensed Counseling Psychologist. Dr. Liu currently runs a private psychotherapy practice and leads a mental health program at...

Jeanne Lam is the Chief Business Officer at Wattpad, a global app and entertainment company that is used by 90 million people around the world and recently acquired by South Korean Internet giant Naver for $600M. Jeanne has over 15 years of experience in tech with a focus on high-growth consumer startups. Prior to Wattpad, Jeanne led growth and user acquisition at Shapeways, the world’s largest 3D...

Andrew Chang is the COO of Paxos, a fintech company that builds infrastructure on blockchain to facilitate the movement between physical and digital assets such as cryptocurrency. Before joining Paxos, Andrew had an array of experience including working in business development at Google, serving as COO of video technology company ConditionOne, and starting his career at Morgan Stanley. Andrew earn...

Raphael Chow is the CEO and Co-Founder at Wevat , a platform that helps travelers get tax refunds on purchases made in the UK. To date, Wevat has helped travellers from 88 countries get tax refunds on purchases amounting to more than £16 million. In this episode, you will learn about how Raphael’s upbringing in Asia and Canada shaped his worldview, how he made the transition from studying biochemi...

Dr. Paul Bhatti is CEO and Founder at Sowingo -  a cloud-based eCommerce and inventory management solution for dentists. Founded in 2012, Sowingo's mission is to transform healthcare by offering dental and medical professionals with tools to more efficiently run their practices and improve patient outcomes. The company helps save dentists time and money through their robust marketplace that c...

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 classma...

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...

Josh Li is the Chief Business Officer at Apifiny, a fintech company and digital asset marketplace utilizing blockchain technology. Prior to this, Josh was a business executive at Google for 12 years - which included time at Google X as its Chief Innovation Officer in Asia and founding the Asian Google Network - one of the largest employee resource groups at Google with presence in 20 countries in...

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 ob...

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,...

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...

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...

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.&nbs...

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,...

Meagan Pi is a Vice-President at Google and has over 20 years of experience working in Silicon Valley. She’s an advocate for women empowerment and is dedicated to reinventing a new set of corporate cultural norms to unleash the true potential in each one of us. Her desire is to create a cultural norm that accepts people of all kinds. On this episode, I chat with Meagan about her upbringing in Chin...

Donna Litt is the Co-founder and COO at Kiite, a B2B AI platform that serves as an intelligent sales coach. Before Kiite, Litt co-founded TribeHR, which was acquired by NetSuite in 2013. On this episode, I chat with Donna about her experience growing up in a mixed race household, how her background in archaeology led to a career in technology, and what drove her to writing and publishing her first...

Paul Huynh was a Google executive for 11 years where he incubated, launched and led new sales and operations teams for products like YouTube, Google Display Network, DoubleClick Buy Side Platforms and DoubleClick Ad Exchange. He started his Google career in NYC working within the healthcare sector before moving to Australia in 2009 where he developed and drove business growth across Asia Pacific....

Rain Takahashi is the CEO and Founder of JAUNTIN', an A.I.-backed on-demand insurance platform that makes obtaining insurance quick and easy. https://jauntin.com

Emma Yang is the fifteen-year-old Founder of  Timeless , a mobile app that helps Alzheimer’s patients stay engaged and connected to loved ones. In September 2017, Timeless was selected as the winner of the MIT Solve Brain Health Challenge and designated as one of the 38 Solvers out of nearly 1,000 solutions from 103 countries. Most recently, Emma was named the Grand Prize Winner of the Women...

Jimmy Chen is the CEO and founder of Propel , a software company that aims to make America’s safety net more user friendly. Prior to Propel, Jimmy graduated from Stanford University with a degree in Symbolic Systems, and worked as a Product Manager at LinkedIn and Facebook.  On this episode, I talk with Jimmy about his childhood as a Chinese immigrant in Kansas City, how he decided to start h...

Sobhan Etemadi is the CEO and Founder of Sobie Systems, a Canadian-based startup that builds smart-product solutions using advanced sensor technologies for monitoring of residential HVAC systems. Sobie Systems’ current product, Everest, monitors the energy efficiency and performance of the HVAC system in real-time and prevents homeowners from exposure to deadly carbon monoxide leaks. Prior to star...

Xiao Wang is the co-founder and CEO of Boundless, helping families navigate the complex legal immigration system more confidently, rapidly, and affordably than ever before. Prior to Boundless, he held leadership roles at Amazon Go, Providence Equity, NYC Department of Education, and McKinsey. Xiao holds a BA/MS from Stanford University and an MBA from Harvard Business School. On this episode, we h...

Eva Wong is Co-Founder and Chief Operating Officer at Borrowell, a Canadian fintech company that helps consumers make great decisions about credit. Eva's career has spanned both the private and not-for-profit sectors, including leadership roles at The OTF Group (a Monitor spin-off), Maple Leaf Foods, UNDP and Oliver Wyman (formerly Mercer Management Consulting). She has studied or worked in the US...

Tiffany Pham is CEO of Mogul, a global platform enabling women worldwide to reach their goals and realize their full potential. A coder, Tiffany developed the first version of Mogul, now reaching across 196 countries and 30,470 cities. She is the bestselling author of YOU ARE A MOGUL and GIRL MOGUL. On this episode I talk with Tiffany abut her upbringing as a Vietnamese-Chinese immigrant to Americ...