I love sharing. I see sharing as happening on three levels—sharing ideas, sharing emotions, and leading through sharing. I would like to show you how I live my life as a sharer.

My first assignment after graduation and moving to Silicon Valley was to help create LinkedIn’s Influencer program. While interviewing some of our seed users on why they share, these Key Opinion Leaders (KOLs) often said that they want to build a voice and use that voice to do good. I became one of the first writers on the platform and quickly fell in love with publishing. It helped me establish my identity as a professional in my field and forced me to study new subjects. Gaining a voice also means gaining responsibilities. I strive to use my voice to influence public discourse. When a TV producer invited me on Fei Cheng Wu Rao, one of the most watched primetime shows in China, I seized this opportunity and talked about my feminist views, pushing for women’s rights to freeze eggs, which is still illegal for unmarried women in the conservative country. I debated with the other panelists, and the episode received more than 20 million views and coverage from Phoenix News and Sohu.com, all while generating a social discussion with thousands of participants. Like the KOLs on LinkedIn, I share ideas because I care and want to actively engage with my community. Sharing has helped me clarify my interests and create a network of knowledge. I have gotten to know people from all walks of life and have even connected them with each other. Sharing has become one of my biggest sources of happiness.

Sharing emotions is often harder than sharing ideas. A sharer is someone who is open-minded, active, and genuinely enjoys interpersonal relationships. As much as I love

using my engineering expertise to create products that can help others, I’m actually more excited about interacting with people rather than products. While building software products on Uber’s Driver Team, I realized that my coworkers are very distant from our drivers. I believe that a good product can only be created with a deep understanding of the customer, and so I made it a point to chat with drivers every day and spend time addressing their problems. I also drove an Uber myself to raise money for charity and even voluntarily worked as a customer representative at a driver service center. Emma, a single mother driving with Uber to make ends meet, told me, “Uber is like a heartless corporate machine... You guys keep punishing me for taking even a small break.” I shared her story with our team and urged everyone to stand in our drivers’ shoes to build products with a sense of empathy. After pitching to the CEO about my plan, I was able to receive his sponsorship to lead the “Driver Loyalty” program. With a team of seven, we built products such as a Fuel Finder, a Restroom Finder and a Pit Stop function, giving drivers ways to take breaks, locate the cleanest restrooms, find the cheapest gas stations, or even grab a free coffee before getting back on the road, all without taking a penalty for being offline. The Washington Times, Fortune and TechCrunch featured our products, but what’s more satisfying is hearing from my driver friends, including Emma, how they love these products. Taking the time to sit and listen to our drivers and share their emotions and stories has definitely paid off.

On top of sharing ideas and sharing emotions, the third level of sharing is to step up and lead. Earlier this year, I moved from California to Beijing to become the Head of Mobile at Mobike, a leading online transportation startup. Managing more than 30 mid- to-senior level engineers at the age of 24 is definitely not an easy task. I had to overcome a lot of negative stereotypes attached with being a young leader, especially within the East Asian culture. My strategy was to lead in an unconventional way by sharing everything. First, I shared my dedication and built trust through an extended period of careful execution. After establishing my reputation as a detail oriented individual who always delivers on promises, senior leadership became willing to assign me greater responsibilities. Second, I shared my expertise. The founding engineers naturally resisted a new leader from a different background until I wrote tens of thousands of lines of code that drastically upgraded the software architecture. As I improved my standing on the team, I was able to introduce many advanced ideas I learned in Silicon Valley, from A/B testing to iterative product development. Lastly, I shared my vision and created a common goal for the team. Chinese managers tend to withhold financial information from R&D, but I worked to be very transparent. Together, we looked at the data and reached a conclusion—we should pivot from pay-per-trip to a subscription model. What’s funny is that when I talked to our Head of Operations and the CFO, they had the same idea! I wanted the Monthly Pass to beat our competitors to market, so I gathered the team and gave them my simple rally speech, saying, “Let’s be first!” No longer doubting my ability to lead, they followed my vision and passionately kickstarted this product. The team finished coding and testing right before our marketing team finished preparing the launch, and it was a massive success. On the day of the launch, number of new app downloads tripled, and the search term “Mobike Monthly Pass” became a top trending topic on Baidu. Inspired by this accomplishment, we later rolled out more than five new growth features. By Q3 2017, we had made our app the most downloaded and highest rated on Apple’s App Store in China.

Sharing is at the heart of all social behavior. Being a sharer has helped me build a network of knowledge, influence the public discourse, and build products that help others all while being an effective leader. Sharing is how I approach the world — with warmth and an open heart.

Finished this piece in Taipei. Thanks Pengpeng for all the editing help.