I was born in Southern California and raised in a loving, close-knit Chinese family with three sisters and a brother. Since my siblings and I were the first generation born in America, our parents hoped that we would do well in our education pathways and prosper. My parents immigrated to America from China and attended college at Ohio State, where my father earned an engineering degree and my mother earned a nutrition degree. Both of them taught my siblings and me the importance of education and hard work. After raising five children full time over a 20-year period, my mother returned to work to become a nutritionist at the largest Kaiser Permanente hospital in Southern California. She loved to talk about how empowering it was to simply teach patients about healthy lifestyles and nutrition rather than depending on medications alone to improve health. I understood how Kaiser Permanente's approach to preventive health care could be so beneficial to patients.