I'm currently building an integrated web and mobile application, called Flowful, to give people insights into what brings out their fullest selves as well as studying Ruby on Rails. I recently returned to the Bay Area from Beijing, where I founded China's first person-to-person microfinance non-profit, called Wokai. Over 5 years, I led the organization from an idea to a live platform with 3,000 contributors financing around 1,000 rural poor to start their own businesses. I led a passionate core team of 7 in Beijing as well as 350 volunteers in our 20 Chapter cities in Asia and North America. Over the course of my time with Wokai as well as my personal dabblings, I've developed a strong skillset in the following areas:
I love stories and the creative process of infusing a vision into the face and DNA of an organization. At Wokai, I led every stage of branding, PR, and communications from an initial concept to a globally recognized brand. I was fortunate enough to secure features in major Western and Chinese media, including CNN, Bloomberg, CBS, USA Today, CCTV, Phoenix TV, China Newsweek, and the South China Morning Post.
I pioneered a model that hadn't existed before in China and didn't yet have a regulatory environment to support it. In the process, I engaged in almost every level of business in China, from a launching national level government partnership with the China Population Wefare Foundation and working with rural government officials in Inner Mongolia and Sichuan provinces, to collaborating with major nation-wide brands and media like Phoenix Media and Douban.com, to working in rural areas with local NGOs and micro-entrepreneurs.
Engaging with stakeholders to acheive lofty goals energizes me. I led Wokai's fundraising and business development efforts for 5+ years, raising $1.12 million to support our operations and micro-loans, funding almost 1,000 micro-entrepreneurs in China to start small business. I also established 15 corporate partnerships with firms including Cathay Pacific and Morrison & Foerster, and launched a strategic partnership with the China Population Welfare Foundation (a government foundation), making Wokai one of the first foreign non-profit organizations licensed to fundraise publically in Mainland China.
After 5 years of working with designers and developers to lead product efforts at Wokai.org, I made the leap to learning to design and code myself. I am currently studying Ruby on Rails and building the application I mentioned above, called Flowful. I spent 4 months stuyding frontend development (HTML, CSS, Javascript, and Jquery) and user-interface design. In the process, I designed & built this site, a reality tv quiz app, a children's game, and a shopping list app.
I'm about to dive into back-end development. In the near future, I'm hoping to be able to build out my ideas, end-to-end.
Branding & Public Relations
Business
in China
Business
Development
Product,
Coding & Design
Through my efforts with Wokai, I was lucky enough to be recognized as the Most Influential Foreigner in China in 2010 by China Newsweek and one of the 100 highest potential social entrepreneurs in Asia under 30 by the Foundation for Youth Social Entrepreneurship in 2009.
Below are two videos where you can see me evangelizing Wokai in EnglishEnglish and Chinese and here are some links to interviews in CBS and Bloomberg.
Feel free to reach out and set up a time to chat. Who knows, maybe we'll end up working together some day!
