In honor of Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month, here is some more information about another famous Asian American that you might not know much about.
Jerry Yang is the co-founder and former CEO of Yahoo! Inc.
Yang was born in Taiwan in 1968. In 1978, his family moved to California where the extended family took care of the children while his mother taught English to others. When he moved to the US, he took the American name Jerry instead of using his name Yang Chih-Yuan. He only knew the word “shoe” when he came to America but within three years, he became fluent in English. He attended Stanford University where he earned his Bachelor of Science and Master of Science in electrical engineering. He met his friend David Filo at Stanford.
Yang and David Filo created an internet website that consisted of a directory of other websites in 1994. The eventually renamed it Yahoo! In 1995, Sequoia Capital invested $2 million in Yahoo! And in 1995, Reuters and Softbank gave more funding. In 1996, it went public. Yang was named as one of the top 100 innovators in the world under the age of 35 in 1996. Yang served as CEO from 2007 to 2009.
In 2012, Yang left Yahoo! and began mentoring other technology startups. He also became an investor through his firm called AME Cloud Ventures.
Yang is married to a Japanese woman, Akiko Yamazaki, and they live in California. He likes to play golf and watch sumo-wrestling.
In 2007, Yang and his wife gave $75 million to Stanford University where $50 million was spent building the “Jerry Yang and Akiko Yamazaki Environment and Energy Building.” This building was designed with sustainable architecture principles. In 2017, they pledged $25 million to the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco.
No comments:
Post a Comment