Ervinna Lim was born and raised in Malaysia. She went to college in Australia and then made her way to the bay area where she gained experience at companies such as Ebay and Stubhub, before making it all the way to Senior VP at Jumio. She's the proud Mom of 2 boys. Is she a tiger parent? She says no, but we say otherwise.
Tony Lee has told his shark attack survival story to National Geographic, Newsweek, ABC7, KITV, Island News, and even theCoderBros. Relive our shortened episode replay as we focus on the craziest story we've ever heard. Tony is the epitome of an Asian using math to live, so make sure your kids get their A's in math!
David Chiu is San Francisco's City Attorney, known for a lot of things, chief among them being the leader of the Birthright Citizenship lawsuits against the Trump administration. The kind of guy who has three degrees from Harvard, he somehow still disappointed his Tiger Mom back in the day (sort of). As one of the co-founders of HAPI Hour, an Asian bar meetup group in San Francisco back in the early 2000s, he's as laid back as the rest of us all while being the best of us.
Alice Loo was raised by her grandparents in China while her parents were trying to make it in life. She finally "met" her parents, who were basically strangers to her, when she moved to the US at the age of 13, leaving the grandparents who had raised her since a month after birth. She's since spent her time ratcheting up the Chinese way of working hard to be successful by getting into Duke for undergrad and then working at Deloitte for what seems like a million years.
Dean Ku is a proud house spouse who spent his kids' formative years down undah in Australia. He's been around the block, having opened Asia's first Starbucks and taking clients out to drink fresh snake blood to working at Red Octane, the Netflix of video games back in the day. He was even there long enough to be a part of Guitar Hero when it got bought eventually by Activision. As Dean taught us that boys down undah would say, welcome to our podcast, c*nts! (Seriously, that's a thing in Australia. But not here, so we bleeped out the u.)
Greyson Lum has the most magical job in the world - he designs themed entertainment. After working 27 years at Disney as an architect for many of their theme park villages, he struck out on his own to found Baker-E, a themed entertainment architecture and design company (who knew those were out there?). Tune in to see how smart, creative, and persistent you need to be to have a magical life.
Tony Lee isn't Ironman, but he's not unlike Tony Stark. He's built uber-successful companies (but in biomed, not weapons). He designed his own special prosthetic legs for each of his sports (though they don't have rockets on them). And Tony's sheer perseverance and Ironman-level craziness brought him to China to close a funding round right after a near-fatal shark attack where he swam to shore with his foot in his pocket. No shortage of inspiration from a man that came back from the literal jaws of death to raise millions for his company. Give it up for Tony Shark (get it?).
Shu-Ling Lee is the Executive Pastor at North America's largest Chinese church, the number 2 guy at a church of 4,000 people (Asians!) in Toronto. Shu-Ling was a bit of a rebel in his youth, maybe even failing some "Asian Six Pack" classes, as they call them in Canada, before turning to a life that serves Christ. Tune in to check out Shu's religious yet progressive views on life, and how Christianity doesn't necessarily make you a better person, but it does give you a place to heal.
Warning - Mature Themes, for 18+. Kaila Yu is a former Playboy model, K-Pop band singer, and is currently a freelance journalist - and she's got a memoir coming out. It's called Fetishized, and in it, she talks about yellow fever, fetishizing of the Asian female, and how she herself may have contributed to it in her youth. Tune in to find out what her strict Asian parents thought, how she became one of the race girls in a Fast and the Furious movie, and why not giving a _bleep_ got her to where she is today.
Season 2, lesss goooooooo! Drop in to our short Season 2 intro where theCoderBros talk about why they changed the podcast name, what they did this summer, and most importantly a preview of Season 2 guests. Me so Asian, you so Asian, we all so Asian.
theCoderBros spend their last episode of season 1 playing a game of Guess How Much - Net Worth edition. Play along as they pull out Asian celebs like Simu Liu, Andrew Yang, and Jackie Chan and find out how much their estimated net worth is, according to the internet. Have an awesome summer everyone, chat you up in the Fall!
Ha Nguyen is ready for some football, at least Wayne thinks she is. On top of being a big college football fan, she's won tens of thousands playing poker back in the day too. Alas, she decided not to play poker professionally and is now a fractional COO, helping a multitude of companies run their operations. From a last-minute escape from Vietnam at age 2 during the fall of Saigon, her life trajectory changed through the selflessness of a foster family who supported Ha's low-income upbringing to eventually attend some of the top schools in the world and finally find success in the business world.
Tiffany Chin is a 3rd generation Chinese American raised in the Bay Area. She has built a successful career as an AI and Design leader. Both of her parents were also designers so I guess the apple doesn't fall too far from the tree so they say. Most interestingly, her White Castle is roller skating. Yes, you read that correctly, it's roller skating at skate parks and dropping into bowls!
Marcella Lee, weeknight news anchor for CBS in San Diego and 24-time Emmy winner, is a nice person. Some have even said TOO nice. But listen to all the lives she's impacted from foster families to homes in wildfires and you'll see that being nice doesn't mean you won't succeed. In fact, it's a big reason why she did.
Rebekka Lien has lived a very unique life so far, especially for an asian. She was born in Germany, moved to Taiwan at age 5 and then to America by age 8. She had a tough childhood which she's had to overcome. And eventually she made her way into becoming an Actor, Screenwriter, Comedian, Voiceover artist and more. She's living with her boyfriend in extreme downsized fashion in their Toyota Rav4 SUV.
Marie Yuen is living her White Castle life in Chicago where she's probably the one and only Asian playwright. Starting with an advertising career in Hong Kong, she started to find her calling after winning the South China Morning Post Short Story Competition there and came back to the US to start her life as a playwright. She's currently raising investments for her next play on a New York stage, Roxane of Bergerac, with an all-Asian cast and a new twist on an old classic. No numchucks included in the Cyrano de Bergerac fight scenes (unfortunately?).
Soon Yu, bestselling author and podcaster extraordinaire, joins us to reminisce about our old Asian rock band days in the late 90s Bay Area. A marketing/user experience guy by trade, Soon also has a successful podcast called Aconic which also interviews guests of Asian descent, including big names like Andrew Yang, Elaine Chow, and soon Martin Yan (can cook!), and two successful books called Iconic Advantage and Friction, available on Amazon and elsewhere. Soon hails from the Davis, CA area where he lives with his son and wife, who he met through a 7-day whirlwind first-date experience and got engaged to only a few weeks later. Now that's love at first sight!
Dan Chan, aka the Millionaires' Mentalist, is an Asian magician. It's not often you hear those two words together, but that's who he is. He loves to wow people, and that's what makes him a great magician. From random street magic to balloon animal gigs with his wife, Dan figured out a long time ago that if you can book a couple shows in a day, that money can add up to a real income. Having wowed the likes of Draymond Green, Eric Yuan (CEO of Zoom), Elon Musk, and yes, even Hansel and Wayne, Dan's the real deal Millionaires' Mentalist. Find out all his secrets on our podcast.
Jimmy Hsu runs five businesses in San Francisco, all within a block of each other. Starting with a coffee shop, he soon expanded to a hair salon, a print shop, a laundromat, and most recently a bake shop. He's the proud owner of all of them, and currently thinking of adding a pizza business to the portfolio. Moving from Kansas to California with $1500 in his pocket, Jimmy learned how to network with people and take advantage of opportunities he found. And he had the balls to go for em, too.
Mitch Wong works in the craziest industry in the Bay Area - real estate. With per-square-foot prices well into the thousands and more, it's not a bad place to be. From going to high school in Hong Kong to opening a micro-brewery in Beijing, Mitch has been around the world and then some. His wife started a successful pre-school that almost did Cantonese immersion (Hansel is bummed they didn't), but instead went to Mandarin immersion. Mitch wraps up the podcast with a real estate tip that'll make you rich, immediately. Or something like that.
