Since 10 years old, my favorite hobby has always been sewing! I've sewed everything under the sun, from goldfish stuffed animals, to my own prom dress, to even more avant-garde projects. There is something so magical about turning 2D yards of fabric into 3D forms of your wildest dreams. Sewing was my first step into the world of design, and I instantly fell in love. Through sewing and design, I've learned my most important life skills, including empathy, innovation, and creativity. During high school, I interned at Equalize Health, a medtech nonprofit startup that was creating low-cost but high-quality medical devices for the third world. Additionally, I was accepted into the Stanford Clinical Science, Technology, and Medicine Internship.


Both of these experiences introduced me to the powerful intersection of healthcare and design, where collaborating with patients and empathetic design could lead to beautiful creative technical solutions that had the potential to impact millions of people worldwide. Learning about the process of design thinking and seeing the prototypes I designed in action completely blew my mind, and I fell in love. Most importantly, I also fell in love with the design thinking process as it centers voices and communities that are often marginalized. After these experiences, my interest in design shifted from sewing and physical design to UI/UX design.


Now, I'm a student at UCLA studying Human Biology & Society with a minor in Asian American Studies. Inside and outside of class, I work to integrate my passion for healthcare and design into everything I do, from my research, to volunteer caseworking with patients at UCLA health, to even doing product design for nonprofits and startups. 


In the future, I hope to become a physician that empowers patients and designs innovative solutions to remove barriers to healthcare access, specifically for the AAPI community. I believe that community-centered and empathetically designed solutions are the future of public health and healthcare as a whole.