I was born in Taiwan. At twelve, my family moved to Vancouver. At twenty-four, I moved to the United States to chase the American Dream the way a lot of immigrant kids do: through tech.

I've worked since my early teens. Washing cars in Vancouver through my school years. Then the line in a restaurant kitchen through university, where I learned the one lesson that never left me: you can't fake a plate. Skimp on the ingredients, rush the prep, cut the portion, and the dish tells on you before it reaches the table.

After school came twenty years in tech, helping Asian brands win in North America. I ran channel marketing for companies like ASUS and Philips, broke a few revenue records, and spoke on stages about how to get products from a factory in Asia onto a shelf in America. A professional bridge between two worlds. I still am.

That career came with a cost I didn't notice for a long time. Early on, I was on a plane every two or three weeks, crisscrossing the US and Canada from one retailer, distributor and trade show to the next. Later, the trips got longer and the distances got bigger: across the Pacific every couple of months, living on two clocks at once, taking Taipei calls at California midnight and Los Angeles calls at Taipei dawn. Airport breakfasts, hotel dinners, sleep whenever the schedule allowed. I was running everything in my life like a product launch except the one product I couldn't replace: my own body.

When I finally paid attention, I went back to what I'd grown up around. Turmeric. Matcha. Functional mushrooms. The everyday wellness traditions of Asia that my parents and grandparents never thought of as "supplements." They were just food, tea, and habit.

But I brought the other half of my life with me: a cook's standards, an engineer's skepticism, and a marketer's knowledge of how easy it is to sell a half-empty promise. When I started reading labels, I saw the industry from the inside. Beautiful packaging. Impressive ingredient lists. Doses too small to matter and formulas your body couldn't absorb anyway.