My Story
A life shaped by discipline, curiosity, and reinvention
A Childhood in the Gymnasium
I grew up on a university campus in China, where my father was a professor at a state-owned sports university. From a very young age, I was immersed in the world of elite athletics — training intensively in rhythmic gymnastics through specialized youth classes at the university. Those early years built a deep foundation of discipline, precision, and body awareness that would shape everything that followed.
Not the Gymnastics You Think
When people hear "gymnastics," they usually picture vaults, uneven bars, and floor tumbling. Rhythmic gymnastics is a different sport entirely — a fusion of dance, ballet, and apparatus manipulation performed to music. Athletes perform with ribbon, ball, hoop, clubs, and rope, and are judged on grace, artistic expression, and technical precision.
I trained in sessions of two to three hours at a time, three to four times a week, building flexibility, coordination, and the ability to perform complex sequences under pressure. The training was rigorous and exacting — every movement had to be precise, every routine rehearsed to the point of instinct.
A New Country at 12
At age 12, I came to the United States. I didn't speak English. It was a second language I wouldn't begin learning until I arrived. Without the ability to easily communicate or hang out with friends, I spent much of my time on the computer — which became both a refuge and a gateway. That solitary immersion in technology planted the seeds for a career I never planned but was naturally drawn toward.
Finding Technology
In high school, I used technology to promote myself — building my own personal website. HTML was difficult at the time, so I used a tool called Homestead.com, and later graduated to Dreamweaver and FrontPage. That early work opened doors sooner than I expected: starting freshman year in the university, the campus web development team hired me as a part-time student employee. After two years there, I had real hands-on experience that made me a natural fit for the IT industry.
Meanwhile, I was playing around extensively with other software — Photoshop, CoolEdit for voice recording — software was already deeply intuitive for me.
From Marketing Major to Enterprise Tech
As a marketing major with a business education at the University of Pittsburgh, I never expected to end up in IT. But when Hyland Software showed up as a booth at my university's career fair, I handed over a resume. That conversation led to my first job in enterprise software, and it's been an enjoyable ride ever since. I didn't study my way into tech — I built my way in, driven by curiosity and a natural comfort with tools.
The Thread That Runs Through
That combination of athletic rigor and self-taught tech curiosity became the foundation of my professional approach. The same discipline I brought to the gymnasium — exhaustive preparation, precision under pressure, the pursuit of total alignment — I bring to product management every day.
Today, after 18 years in enterprise technology, I remain drawn to practices that demand total presence — whether it's designing a complex enterprise system, teaching a yoga class, or exploring what's possible with AI.