Like many scaling startups, my company didn’t officially steward company culture, with employee interactions defined by departmental silos. So when I overheard several new hires chatting in Mandarin in the company cafeteria, I saw an opportunity to meet others and practice my Chinese. But when I sat with them, they quickly switched to English. I suggested we continue in Mandarin, and we turned these meet-ups into weekly Chinese-language lunches, building an informal affinity group. The immersive experience of these chats often ended when other non-Chinese-speaking colleagues joined. Recognizing an opportunity to engage more people, and with a modest budget from our HR department, I organized our first monthly film-n-dinner night. Each month, a different member “hosted,” selecting a foreign language movie and takeout from that country. As the first “host,” I featured a Taiwanese movie, and I would occasionally pause to explain important context not captured by subtitles to non-Chinese speakers, a precedent carried on by each “host” to ensure cultural nuance translated for everyone. But the best part was seeing my colleagues passionately talk about the films and cuisines they curated. Our film-n-dinner club provided a fun way for employees in different departments to connect with one another and evolved to become a staple of my company's culture. When COVID-19 shifted the company to remote work, our film-n-dinner club became a virtual forum and unofficial employee resource group for Asian-Pacific Islander (API) employees to share stories and find support. Eventually, it became a hub that connected Reflektive to API social issues.

Gay. Asian. Weightlifter. Living my identities is how I find meaning in life. But it wasn't always so easy. Growing up, I was never “one of the boys” and kids avoided me at lunch, put off by the waft of the "stinky" leftovers my mom had prepared the night before. To fit in, I began flushing my lunches down the toilet. With the indignity of my Taiwanese lunches sucked away, I felt in control of who I wanted to be. In high school, to coexist with my gayness and Asianness, I turned to the gym; if I could “get buff,” I could influence how others perceived me. At Cornell, I compartmentalized my identities, separating my gayness and Asianness. On the one hand, I came out to my parents and explored my queerness. On the other, I enrolled in Chinese language courses despite resisting Chinese school in childhood. Yet, my passion for fitness insinuated itself into a self-worth incompatible with my Asianness, convinced that their overlap hindered my self-expression. However, in 2018, my three parts collided with the sudden death of my grandmother. In Taiwan, my grandmother's Buddhist funerary rituals exposed me to a cultural legacy, which filled the gaps that had perforated my Asian-American experience. Then, at a CrossFit gym in Taipei, I befriended someone who shared my intersections: Gay. Asian. Weightlifter. In this moment, I finally saw my identities and felt how their overlap actually made me whole: I’m a gay, Asian-American weightlifter. For people like me, there is never a "perfect fit." Though in my journey searching for how to belong, I saw my intersectionality, and found the incongruity that is me. This incongruity is how I find meaning in life. And, embracing them provides a compass leading me to who I am and who I can be.

Post-MBA, I hope to join the product team at a leading VR/AR company like Meta to learn best practices and understand the growing VR/AR market. My long-term vision is to build a gamified learning platform using VR/AR technology to create cross-cultural experiences that inspire exploration and engender empathy. On family travels, my dad eschewed travel guides, often leaving us to wander unfamiliar locales. As we got lost in crowded markets or hidden alleyways, we often found ourselves playing charades with locals for directions, but these interactions made my travel stories our own and remind me to always consider others’ perspectives. I realize how privileged I was to travel so frequently; everyone deserves to experience other worlds, but traveling is a luxury. As VR/AR tech becomes more accessible, I believe it can help democratize travel and other experiences, tapping into everyone’s capacity to discover and learn across cultures, and in so doing broaden horizons and cultivate compassion. So far, I've seen how software can change organizational culture in enterprises by engaging users. I understand how to harness technology and behavioral science to drive adoption in structured organizations. But my goal is to make a more significant impact—one that can also create social good—by extending this knowledge to consumer applications. My primary objective for the short-term is to join a product team at a consumer tech company that uses gamification to nudge consumer behavior and to master the end-to-end product lifecycle. Ultimately, my vision is to create a more compassionate world through immersive cross-cultural experiences that tap into people’s innate curiosity. I can imagine everyday people leveraging this technology to explore their cultural curiosities. However someone might use this technology, my mission remains: spark curiosity and drive global empathy through learning across cultures.

On family travels, my dad always eschewed travel guides, often leaving us to wander unfamiliar locales. As we got lost in crowded markets or hidden alleyways, we often found ourselves struggling to communicate, playing charades for directions. These experiences made our travel stories uniquely ours and were the nascent beginnings of my passion for culture. I realize how privileged I was to travel so frequently; everyone deserves to experience other worlds, but traveling is a luxury. However, I believe VR/AR technology can democratize travel and other experiences, tapping into everyone's capacity to discover and learn across cultures, and in so doing broaden horizons and cultivate compassion. I’ve always believed that cultural engagement can help people get along. Market data continues to suggest that virtual reality (VR) experiences could democratize travel and cultural engagement. VR technology has been around 60+ years but has struggled with mainstream adoption, though in recent years has gained traction within the gaming industry. Meanwhile, augmented reality (AR), a more recent innovation, has already achieved widespread acceptance. In 2020, AR outpaced VR, tracking 34MM+ more users than VR. As VR/AR becomes more mainstream, we can start to see how VR/AR is less about cool technology and more about enhancing everyday experiences. Thanks to popular apps like PokémonGo and Snapchat, almost every American with a smartphone has access to AR. Still, many Americans don’t know what AR is, and many more don't even realize they've used AR applications before, suggesting that AR's accessibility and seamless integration into consumers' daily activities and habits are contributing to AR's accelerated adoption. Travel brings people together, and I believe a gamified cultural engagement platform that combines VR’s strength in gaming with AR’s integration into common experiences could help more people discover new cultures. Though UX and content offerings represent VR/AR’s top blockers, rapid hardware innovations and 5G rollout are expanding access, emphasizing content as the next hurdle. People want to travel. Not just to see places, but to learn about culture. Yet, traveling is a luxury. VR/AR-enabled cultural engagement promises to expand this privilege to everyday people.