theCoderBros Go To White Castle (Cuz We Ah, So Asian)

Ha Nguyen is ready for some football, at least Wayne thinks she is. On top of being a big college football fan, she's won tens of thousands playing poker back in the day too. Alas, she decided not to play poker professionally and is now a fractional COO, helping a multitude of companies run their operations. From a last-minute escape from Vietnam at age 2 during the fall of Saigon, her life tr...

Tiffany Chin is a 3rd generation Chinese American raised in the Bay Area. She has built a successful career as an AI and Design leader. Both of her parents were also designers so I guess the apple doesn't fall too far from the tree so they say. Most interestingly, her White Castle is roller skating. Yes, you read that correctly, it's roller skating at skate parks and dropping into bowls!

Marcella Lee, weeknight news anchor for CBS in San Diego and 24-time Emmy winner, is a nice person. Some have even said TOO nice. But listen to all the lives she's impacted from foster families to homes in wildfires and you'll see that being nice doesn't mean you won't succeed. In fact, it's a big reason why she did.

Rebekka Lien has lived a very unique life so far, especially for an asian. She was born in Germany, moved to Taiwan at age 5 and then to America by age 8. She had a tough childhood which she's had to overcome. And eventually she made her way into becoming an Actor, Screenwriter, Comedian, Voiceover artist and more. She's living with her boyfriend in extreme downsized fashion in their Toyot...

Marie Yuen is living her White Castle life in Chicago where she's probably the one and only Asian playwright. Starting with an advertising career in Hong Kong, she started to find her calling after winning the South China Morning Post Short Story Competition there and came back to the US to start her life as a playwright. She's currently raising investments for her next play on a New York...

Soon Yu, bestselling author and podcaster extraordinaire, joins us to reminisce about our old Asian rock band days in the late 90s Bay Area. A marketing/user experience guy by trade, Soon also has a successful podcast called Aconic which also interviews guests of Asian descent, including big names like Andrew Yang, Elaine Chow, and soon Martin Yan (can cook!), and two successful books called Iconi...

Dan Chan, aka the Millionaires' Mentalist, is an Asian magician. It's not often you hear those two words together, but that's who he is. He loves to wow people, and that's what makes him a great magician. From random street magic to balloon animal gigs with his wife, Dan figured out a long time ago that if you can book a couple shows in a day, that money can add up to a real income...

Jimmy Hsu runs five businesses in San Francisco, all within a block of each other. Starting with a coffee shop, he soon expanded to a hair salon, a print shop, a laundromat, and most recently a bake shop. He's the proud owner of all of them, and currently thinking of adding a pizza business to the portfolio. Moving from Kansas to California with $1500 in his pocket, Jimmy learned how to networ...

Mitch Wong works in the craziest industry in the Bay Area - real estate. With per-square-foot prices well into the thousands and more, it's not a bad place to be. From going to high school in Hong Kong to opening a micro-brewery in Beijing, Mitch has been around the world and then some. His wife started a successful pre-school that almost did Cantonese immersion (Hansel is bummed they didn&#39...

Kelvin Fu, engineer extraordinaire, tells us about the life of an executive on Honda's racing team. His job is to spend marketing money to make Honda look good by winning as many races like Indy 500 as he can. From wind tunnels to bleeding edge engine designs, Kelvin's team tunes race cars into speed demon machines so you, fair consumer, would think Honda is cool and go buy one. But as the...

Kiki Chang, father of a one year old (congrats!) in his late 50's, is a talker. Not only on this podcast, but to his pediatric patients in his psychiatry practice. He's also the dad of a 22 yo musical prodigy who currently studies songwriting at Berkelee (no, not Berkeley; BERKELEE, one of the top music colleges in the world). Shout out to Zach, check him out at https://www.zachco.com/. As...

EunJin Raney is Korean through and through but you'd never know it because she married white. Born in Korea, she immigrated to the US first in the Bronx and then to outside Boston where she picked up English. Her first big disappointment in life was not getting into Harvard, but it sounds like she's lived a pretty awesome life since. Having found her White Castle, EunJin now lives in the s...

Maile Lynn is none other than Hansel's own oldest kid. A sophomore at NYU in Shanghai, they are non-binary (they/them). How did they come out? Why do they think they are non-binary? What does that even mean? And maybe even more interestingly, what's the Chinese word for non-binary? Did Uncle Wayne find out any tips about how to work the college system for his own daughters? If you have kid...

In this special book-launch episode (that's right, our book launches today!), theCoderBros share insights about the book, personal nuggets, and of course some valuable life tips. Listen in and find out about Hansel's cool thumb ring trend, Wayne eating pigs feet, or the hilarious punk-pop band they were in together, Timmy Ramen. And don't forget to check out our book, theCoderBros Go T...

Judy Chen is master of the dance. As an 18 year old freshman in college, she made the dance team for NBA's Seattle SuperSonics, back when they were crazy good, with Shawn Kemp, Gary Payton, and a host of other talent. Her daughter was passed the dancing genes, as she, at only 13, is attending San Francisco Ballet School while performing live shows for the San Francisco Ballet. In the recent pa...

Lynna Tsou runs one of our top theCoderSchool locations, is a founding member of a Mandarin immersion program in Oakland (Yu Ming), a part-time educational psychologist, and a part-time professor teaching other teachers. If that weren't enough, she's also the Chair for the Berkeley Public Schools Fund Board. A long time foodie and master chef, Lynna grew up in Wisconsin in a town of about...

Steve Leung's got some crazy stories. Coming from grandparents in Hong Kong so wealthy that they didn't need any formal education, his father decided to give all that money up to pursue his own dreams, including coming to the US to eventually get his PhD from MIT. While we're sure Steve often wonders if he should connect back to grandpa for a big inheritance, he says no, and instead learned to fol...

Jim Yang, not to be confused with Jimmy O Yang, is a chill dude. This Philly fan moved from super Asian Bay Area to white and cold Minnesota after he was married, only to eventually head back to LA. These days, he's heading up marketing at a bunch of startups, but it's how he marketed his son that's most interesting. Marketed his son so well that he got admitted into Northwestern recen...

Sarah Nguyen (pronounced WEEEN, in Viet!) is your regular good-old San Franciscan. Except she had a hell of a childhood. Sarah was born in Vietnam and was 3 years old when Saigon fell and the commies came to town. Soon after, her family planned to escape. Coming from a poor fishing village, Sarah, with her brother, followed her mom in the dark of night to get on a boat and set off to anywhere but...

Alex Poon was a champion ping-ponger back in Louisiana growing up, only to find out California had a lot better ping pong players. An early eBay employee (around number 25!), he eventually went on to start his own mobile app company before the iPhone days, and now bounces back and forth between running a Venture Capital company and playing pickleball in semi-retirement mode. He's definitely not a...

Gin Chao - if you know the name, you know the reputation. Partier extraordinaire from back in the day (and maybe even today), Gin's had some of the most enviable jobs for guys like us. From working in the NBA along with greats like Yao Ming and Jeremy Lin, to being the Strategy Officer for one of the biggest crypto exchanges in the world (Binance), to being friends with the CEO (CZ, once basically...

May Ngeow is a career woman, spanning 19 years at Accenture where she made partner, to now VP at Visa. Growing up in rural Pennsylvania near Gettysburg meant she was the single Asian in the world who actually knew what the Mason Dixon line was at the time. Afraid she maybe isn't "enough" of a Tiger Mom, May balances her corporate life by spending family time balancing that, too, making her kids do...

Simon Ru, founder (with successful exit) of UpNest, a marketplace for real estate agents, has had an amazing life. From first gen Chinese with parents working minimum wage at the garment factory, to Army reserve, off to Berkeley, and finally founding two companies, he's done it all. Relive his biggest White Castle as he talks about what it's like to start a business from scratch, and without any r...

Kenny Chen will tell you he's Taiwanese, not Chinese (dammit). Growing up in super-white Michigan, he didn't even know he was Asian back then. But he soon found his way through college and eventually started his own successful marketing agency (two, in fact!), which he eventually handed over to his wife Kathy to run (she still runs it). That's because he realized he already found his first White C...

Joe Cha, boilerplate Stanford undergrad and Harvard business school? No way. He may have gone to the top schools in the country and become mad successful founding companies and making the big bucks at first, but unlike most of us, he decided that wasn't his White Castle way early on. He's no longer chasing the golden handcuffs, in fact, just the opposite. He's now a professor at a community colleg...