"My parents raised me to get good grades, go to a good college, and get a good job. They were entirely focused on security because they didn't want my sister and me to experience the hardships that they had as immigrants. They encouraged me not to take risks - just keep my head down, work hard, and appreciate what I had. The day I got into Princeton, I thought, "Thank goodness. I'm going to be OK." I graduated with an engineering degree."
"Then, my family had a difficult year: my dad had heart surgery, my mom was diagnosed with cancer, and my little sister experienced an eye injury that required her to sit in the dark for weeks on end."
Luisa Zhou grew up with immigrant parents who emphasized security, academic success, and stable employment while discouraging risk. She earned an engineering degree from Princeton and began a corporate analytics career that felt constraining. Early startup experience broadened her skills despite eventual failure, and a later digital ad job offered a high salary but limited flexibility. A year of family health crises — including her father's heart surgery, her mother's cancer diagnosis, and her sister's eye injury — exhausted her paid time off and motivated her to leave and start her own business, which now exceeds $1 million in revenue.
Read at Business Insider
Unable to calculate read time
Collection
[
|
...
]