About Me

I'm a curious person with a lot of different interests.  Some things you might notice about me if we shared a meal together:

I am a Mom to two amazing little boys. I'm trying to raise them to be perfectly imperfect (but really perfect) thoughtful men.  I am a wife to an incredible man who lets me be me (unless I'm being impossibly difficult).  I am the daughter of immigrant parents (Mom is Vietnamese, Dad is Chinese). I am the sister to two siblings who love Top Gun and Three Amigos as much as I do.   I went to UC Berkeley (Go Bears!) and have spent the last 20 years working in finance (I love that the stock market can be a humility machine).

I find hard working people extremely magnetic.  My parents are immigrants and came to the US with nothing but determination and drive.  I like to surround myself with people that work hard and motivate me to get better every day. 

I love to get inspired. Inspiration comes in many different forms for me.  My kids inspire me a great deal. Their positivity. Their curiosity. Their pure joy from the simplest of things. They are my everything and I can only hope one day they are inspired by something I've done.

I love rock music. Rockers I can read about and never get bored:  Chester Bennington, John Bonham, Danny Carey, Chris Cornell, Brandon Flowers, Freddie Mercury, Neil Peart, Eddie Vedder.

I love pop music too (much to the chagrin of my husband). I'm a Lamb (who else watched Glitter...in the theater?). I'm a Belieber. I'm a Little Monster. I'm part of the Swifties. I'm in the Bey Hive. 

I love food second only to my family and friends. I have a spreadsheet that tracks the restaurants and dishes I love by city, state and country because who doesn’t like more spreadsheets in life. Don’t answer that.

I love to travel. Connecting with people, food and music in a new place...doesn't get much better than that for me. I live in and love California (flaws and all). While I’ve been lucky to see a lot of places, there are a few cities that I've left a bit of my heart: Aix-en-Provence, Big Sur, Capetown, Costa Brava, Hong Kong, Kyoto, Lutry, New York, Oslo, Reykjavik, Vung Tau.

M A X I M S

I started this podcast in 2018 as a fun passion project to highlight inspirational profiles. Back then, there were "only" ~500K podcasts. Now with over 3+ million podcasts around the world, I am both humbled and grateful for your listenership. I know your time and attention is being sought after from every possible outlet. The Growth & Failure podcast now has listeners in 102 countries!! (I had to look up how many countries there were....any guesses? Final Answer: 195.)

Thank you for listening and making Growth & Failure such a success. This show is nothing without all of my guests. Thank you to these incredible people. I have the deepest respect for their curiosity, their kindness, their victories, and their defeats. Above all, I'm incredibly thankful that they allowed me to share their story of growth.

Through the years, I've been asked to do speaking engagements centered around lessons learned from hosting the show. After distilling the commonalities of these ambitious athletes, investors, educators, artists, doctors, entrepreneurs and more - I wanted to share the maxims that I've gained from this show. Please enjoy...

Connection Not Perfection

Let go of the pursuit of perfection and focus on progressing. It can be in your personal relationships, at work, in the gym… small and continuous improvement is the way to go. Let go of the idea that there’s anything or anyone that is perfect. You do you.

Create a Personal Board of Directors

Deliberately choose who is in your ecosystem. The people you surround yourself with are essential and should be carefully and intentionally constructed in areas you want to grow.

Control What
You Can Control

There are a lot of things out of your control. What other people do, say, buy, eat, wear, etc. Stop focusing on those things and spend more of your mindshare on actions and activities based on what YOU can control: your mindset and your effort. Nobody has greater control over those two things than you.

Yes &

You don't have to be an improv specialist to use this as a philosophy in life. Something trips you up? Yes, And I'll get right back up. Someone spills your drink? Yes, And I'll just get another. Accept and expand. It's an incredibly powerful and positive mindset. Don’t focus on the excuses, focus on moving forward.

Start Now

End the analysis paralysis. Instead of reading about it, thinking about it, talking about it…Just DO it. Do it and grow. Do it and fail. Most importantly - learn from it.

Manage
Serendipity

Luck plays a MAJOR factor in success. You can INCREASE your luck by increasing your exposure: to people, to experiences, to education, and more. To increase your chances of luck in life, rendezvous more. Most of your encounters won't amount to anything, but it takes one engagement to potentially change your life. You can increase your odds.