I have been teaching for over 8 years. I first started off with teaching my sister elementary math. This was my pride as a the older sibling. I then tutored my relatives in English and wrote children’s books. In high school, I started tutoring refugee children in all subjects at the Sant’ Egidio organization in Rome, Italy. Now, at Stanford, I am working on spellr, my startup that aims to provide cheap and personalized English phonics tutoring to children all around the world, with a specific focus on dyslexic children.

I am not entirely sure why I went into education and why I started teaching. Part of me thinks that it is related to my upbringing. As the English, Chinese, and Italian-speaking first-born of two Chinese parents in Rome, I took on the duty of translating my parents’ documents and paving the way for my younger sibling and cousins. Teaching was tool I used to do so. Another part of me thinks that it is because of my passion to give. I find the most joy in sending gifts, comforting friends, and bringing value to something/someone they otherwise couldn’t have achieved by themselves. There is an ego element to it, but I love to give because I love to see people happy. Teaching allows me to give and develop friendships with anyone, from strangers to relatives.

I bring my teaching experience to all the work I do. Being a teacher and a multi-cultural designer has allowed me to empathize in ways that are bigger than what the average person can do. I love the process of discovering users’ pain points, achieving product market fit, and solving problems through multiple rounds of iterations. These are all processes I would do for every student I teach, and every student I hope to help at spellr. Design is the word for all that I do in life.

spellr at OpenAI x PearVC’s Hackathon in 2024! We were chosen as top 6 / 60 teams.

FAQs

  • As a kid, I struggled to spell French dance terms in my notebook in ballet class. I felt stupid because I saw that my friends could spell them easily. I am not dyslexic, but my small frustration with spelling was what prompted me to look into our current support network for dyslexic children.

    Turns out, products exist, but many of them are not accessible to all dyslexic children because of their high prices. We wanted to create an affordable and fun platform where children, especially dyslexic children, can practice their English reading and writing. Feel free to reach out to test our MVP :)

  • This summer, I learned how to create motion graphics through Rive from scratch. I had no background in animating, but I did know how to design. With our current 4 person spellr team, it just made sense for me to tackle this challenge.

    I began by watching Youtube videos, looking at Rive community files, and starting my own first project. I first learned how to animate text, and I was stoked. I then created the spellr mascot by looking at Duolingo's design rules for inspiration and created a welcome animation and simple reaction animations. Lastly, I created a tutorial for our Air Writing activity. I learned a lot about the hand structure and how best to animate directions using the twisting of the hand and a couple of arrows. There were times where I was intimidated, stressed, and confused about the work I had to do, but this journey has made me realize that I can learn anything if I put my mind to it.

    My newest challenge now is web development! I am currently learning HTML and CSS, and I am recreating the Youtube UI. Super fun, super challenging, and all in all, a great learning journey!

  • Testing is so important! I have always known that it is important to show my work to others for feedback, but when it comes to developing mass products, testing early and effectively is even more important.

    The funniest instance that made me realize the importance of testing was when I showed my first version of the Air Writing Tutorial to my sister. In my head, the animation started with a pinching hand 🤏 . However, when my sister saw the tutorial, she saw a slanted 🤘 where the index and ring finger were holding onto each other for dear life. If I had never shown my design early on, I would've had to deal with a much tougher period of redesigning.

  • Vinted, hands down!

    Vinted is the scrappy and actually useful Depop of Europe. I use it to buy second-hand items and sell old clothes. I also help my mom run her account and sigh at the cheap prices she marks for her expensive second-hand clothes.

    My favorite Vinted feature is the direct-translation service. Forget using Google Translate, Vinted directly translates your message into the receiver's desired language, enabling quick and easy communication between anyone around the world. This has allowed me to sell with confidence and buy with trust. Highly recommend Vinted to anyone!