I grew up bouncing between a small rural town in China and big cities like Beijing and Hong Kong. Every year, I’d return to my hometown to visit family. Those trips made one thing clear: privilege is assigned at random.

In Beijing, I had Korean BBQ on weekends and swam at exclusive clubs with marble showers. But those experiences felt surreal when I went back to my hometown. There, I'd chat with acquaintances heading out to sell plastic bottles for extra cash, and sit with my aunt as she worried over everyday expenses.

My life turned out differently than most people in my town, and it wasn’t because of anything I did. My dad got into college, met the right people, and was offered opportunities few others had. I don’t discount his ambition or hard work, but the fact remains: it was also privilege that laid the groundwork for him. His mom, a librarian, brought him to work every day, where he spent hours reading and developed a thirst for knowledge. Being the only son in a Chinese family in the 1960s, he also received the family’s limited resources, while my aunts had to make do with less.

As I got older, I started to see how stacked the deck really is. Life doesn’t just start unfair—it’s designed to stay that way. Systems hold people down, reinforcing the same inequalities they're born into. That truth hits me hard. But it also drives me. I want to break those barriers and build solutions that make life easier for the people facing the toughest odds.

For me, design is the tool to do it. It’s like a superpower. It helps you cut through the noise and find what really matters. It pushes you to challenge your own assumptions and build empathy. It brings people together to solve problems in ways none of them could on their own. And most importantly, it can hand the mic to people who’ve never had one.