Member-only story
My Heroine’s Journey
My journey to leadership as an Asian female has had a long and meandering path to this present time when I am 44.
I grew up with a tiger mom who I believe is an undiagnosed manic-depressive. She loved me deeply. She gave up her career to follow my father’s job with Thai Airways, taking on the role of home holder to move our family every 3–4 years to a different country. She gave up her own aspirations and fiercely passed them on to my sister and I in the form of sky-high expectations.
I was a good girl. Culturally Thai-Chinese and raised to respect my elders and the Buddhist community we practiced in. I am Thai. Yet I went to international schools where critical thinking and western concepts of self were drilled into me. Even though my first languages were a mixture of Thai and Teochew (a dialect of southern Chinese spoken in Thailand), I’m now most comfortable in English. I sound like a native Californian to those of you who have met me.
I lived in fear of my mother’s moods and compensated by being a good girl. Quiet, obedient, and withdrawn. I excelled in school.
As I grew up and moved halfway around the world to attend college at Stanford, I learned what it was like to be a female in a technical field. I found my way into design via a mixture of computer science, psychology and philosophy, learning that I enjoyed being a…
