Episode 198 with Tami Zhu

Tami Zhu is the general manager of Kika Tech’s U.S. headquarters based in San Jose, CA. A well-regarded media and business executive, Tami has an outstanding global track record across Asia, Europe, and the United States. Before joining Kika, Tami was the GM of an AI and robotics startup in San Francisco, where under her leadership, the company raised over $150M in VC funding, won multiple CES Innovation Awards for two consecutive years and became recognized as a dominant AI player in China. Prior to that, Tami was vice president, and one of the few Asian executives at IPG Mediabrands. At IPG Mediabrands she led the innovations of digital media with the focus in social media advertising. She also led repositioning of the company’s digital media business in China, achieving 90 percent year-over-year growth. Prior to Mediabrands, Tami held various executive positions including vice president at IAC/InterActiveCorp and head of AOL Ventures, where she was ranked the top female Asian executive in the company. Before that, she launched Excite@Home’s international joint ventures in the Netherlands, Australia, and Japan. Tami holds an MBA from MIT Sloan, which eventually propelled her into the entrepreneurial world. Prior to MIT, she was a C++ software engineer on the Borland C++ compiler team upon earning her master’s in computer science from University of California, San Diego. In addition to her advanced degrees, Tamiholds a bachelor of science in information sciences from Beijing University with an emphasis in computational linguistics and Chinese natural language processing. Tami’s worldly experience has influenced her love of language, especially Japanese and Spanish, while also helping her to deeply appreciate the technical nature of computing languages. Tami has been profiled in Travel Channel China, TechCrunch and Forbes. Ms. Zhu has also spoken at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory’s LabTech 2016 Conference, RoboBusiness PitchFire 2016, Stanford University, TiE Conference, 2016, Santa Clara and the SVC Angel Annual Technology Summit 2016, Silicon Valley. http://www.kikatech.com https://twitter.com/KikaKeyboard https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.qisiemoji.inputmethod&referrer=5 https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/kika-keyboard-emoji-keyboard/id1035199024?mt=8