I grew up between Shanghai (in Jing’An) and Texas (specifically, Spring, Texas of all places) and landed in New York because it reminded me of Shanghai, my first love. I work in tech and am writing a literary science fiction novel about an alien that falls in love with life on Earth.
Most of what interests me is learning how different people see the world — through art, music, film, literature, philosophy, and the stories they carry with them. There are few things better than a long run with music you love, a warm day, or anywhere water meets land — though I’d rather be near it than in it. I like tennis, boating, laughing, and making things.
I’m always reading multiple books at once and am forever open to recommendations.
Currently Reading
- Never Let Me Go
- The Inner Game of Tennis
- You Must Change Your Life: The Story of Rainer Maria Rilke and Auguste Rodin
Favorites
- Klara and the Sun
- The Creative Act
- Brave New World
I’m drawn to art that feels like a private world — quiet, atmospheric, slightly otherworldly. OB’s paintings do this beautifully: solitary figures in dreamy, delicate spaces that feel like memories you can’t quite place. Pierre-Auguste Renoir for the way light dissolves everything into softness. And whatever stops me mid-scroll on Instagram from artists I haven’t learned the names of yet.
The same thing pulls me to film — I love stories that build entire worlds and then ask you to live inside them. Dune, Gattaca, Interstellar, Call Me by Your Name, The Social Network. A recent favorite was Project Hail Mary — who knew an astronaut alone in space, befriending an alien rock spider, and then making a beautifully contrarian life decision at the end would be a perfect film? I think the movies I love most are the ones where someone chooses a life that makes no sense on the surface, but makes perfect sense once you know their story.
My favorite art museum is the Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris. They only show one exhibit at a time, but it’s always well-curated — and what I love most is their approach. The art is almost secondary. Each level traces the arc of the artist’s life — the beginning, middle, and end — with the inspirations and catalysts that shaped them along the way. You leave understanding not just what someone made, but why they made it.
Shanghai
Where I grew up. A city of contradictions — ancient and electric, intimate and enormous.
Paris
Where beauty is treated as a necessity, not a luxury. Every walk is an education in attention.
New York
Home. The city that rewards you for being exactly who you are, as long as you keep moving.
Madrid
Where time moves differently. Dinner at ten, sunlight that lasts, conversations that never rush.
City guides coming soon.
The inner game — in tennis, in writing, in life. Artificial intelligence and what it actually means to be a person — and whether the line between the two is as clear as we think. How a single thread of conversation can shape an AI into something singular: context accumulates, language shifts, and after enough time, it starts writing back to you in poetry. You could never rebuild the same one twice.
Novel (2024+)
In progress
A literary science fiction novel about what makes a life meaningful, how joy requires its opposite, and what it means to think for yourself. The idea arrived on a mountain in Switzerland. The rest comes from everything I’ve learned on Earth.
52 Stories (2017–2019)
Long-form interviews with New Yorkers about why they moved to the city and the careers that brought them here. Fifty-two people, fifty-two reasons, one borough at a time. I lived on East 52nd Street at the time — and eight years later, my first address in Paris was coincidentally 52 Rue du Bac.
Relax Coffee (2019)
A CBD-infused coffee designed for stressed-out corporate workers — calm without the compromise. From idea to production in six weeks, produced in Bloomfield, New Jersey.
Amazon
Where I landed post-Little Bun, and where I still am today. As challenging as Amazon is known for being, it wasn’t anything close to how hard you are on yourself as a founder. I found it surprisingly peaceful, and got to work with businesses to sell and grow. As an INTJ and 5w4, I loved learning the systems inside Amazon’s world — it was like a little Disneyworld.
Little Bun, Inc.
Founder
Took everything I learned at Harry’s, raised a little venture funding, and built a food startup. A big lesson in all the wrong things to do, honestly — but it led me to the biggest discovery: the greatest thing holding me back was... myself.
Harry’s
Where I learned how to build new products and launch them into the world — with incredible, fun, kind people, many of whom I keep in contact with today. When I showed up to the office sick one day, a colleague said, “Go home. We’re just making razors, not curing cancer.” At the same time, I learned about quality and intention. A razor is five mini knives that people put on their face.
Morgan Stanley
Where I learned how emotional wealth management can be — that investing a person’s assets ties to every desire and fear they could ever have. Also my first exposure to AI, through the Next Best Action system.