Moving to New York City was the next big bet I took on myself, after trying my first pageant and winning the 2019 Miss Chinese Chicago Queen title. I still fondly remember my time as a contestant and titleholder as amazing experiences to commemorate my early twenties. The pageant, namely Victoria’s coaching, coaxed out and nurtured a more elegant, more confident version of myself that I always knew I had, but didn’t know how to express at the time. This glowing iteration of myself was excited to experience more of my own potential, and NYC seemed to be the perfect city to grow in.
In the Big Apple, in order to sustain the wonderful lifestyle I had built in Chicago after graduating college, I continued working at tech startups focused on logistics, specifically shipping. When I moved to Manhattan, I started a new role as manager at a Series A Paris- based startup looking to automate Fine Arts shipping. As a manager, I built out my own Pricing Strategy team and helped establish the company’s first New York office. It was amazing to balance my passion for Fine Art with my engineering background, in this role. I felt that my impact on the Art World was so unique in this position. The pricing algorithm that my team built provided live shipping quotes for galleries, auction houses, and artists. I was grateful to attend the art shows, studio visits, art museum installations, through the job. It was fun to explore this new glamorous world from behind the scenes.
Perhaps, New York City’s fast paced lifestyle started rubbing off on me, and after some time, I found myself wanting change again, in unexpected ways. I first started to rethink my professional experiences in the tech world. With the development of tools such as ChatGPT and rapid growth applying AI, Machine Learning, the field of big data was changing faster than ever. I realized that I had to join a more established and a more well-resourced tech startup and work in a more established discipline at the startup, in order to continue growing with top tech talent and utilize the newest technology.
In the Fine Arts space, as I became an art collector myself and started making friends with all different kinds of artists, my desire to express myself and my ideas through painting continued to grow as well. I realized I wanted more than just proximity to artists, I wanted to see my own potential as an artist. The conclusion I came to was that I needed to redistribute my efforts between the tech world and the art world, which was neatly merged in my first job, so that I could continue to reach my full potential in both the tech and art spheres.
This year, I started a new role at a digital freight broker, as a Data Product Manager. Due to the widened scope of my job and increased earnings, I am able to self-fund myself to enroll in the New York Academy of Art and study oil painting focused on portraiture. Although my current job doesn’t sit perfectly between the Fine Art and Tech world anymore, I’ve found a way to express myself overall as an artist who works with two main different mediums, data, and paint (sometimes acrylic, sometimes oil!).
Since transitions can be tough alone, I started a blog (shipeasely.com) to write about the lessons I’ve had so far, as someone switching from doing strategy work to product management, in order to share ideas and keep track of my own progress. For my art studies, I have set a goal to have my first solo art show in fall of next year to keep me motivated and excited to share my paintings with family and friends as a thank you to all of them, for all their support.
I hope each challenge I take in my life continues to inspire others to also dive into the unknown feeling assured that everything will always be better. Every time I’ve taken a bet, I’ve always learned more about myself, and been pleasantly surprised at my own capabilities.