Why is she on our inspiration board?

Clara has had an incredible career in tech having worked for Oracle, Google, Microsoft, Salesforce, and now Meta. She is the author of two books; "The Facebook Era" (2009) and "The Social Business Imperative" (2016). At the age of 29 she founded a successful company called Hearsay Systems, and that same year she was named to the board of directors at Starbucks.

You'd be hard pressed to find someone who has accomplished as much as Clara, and incredibly, she's only 42 years old. We'd love to interview her to reverse engineer her meteoric career and who were some of the most influential people who helped her along the way.

Where is she from?


Born in Hong Kong, Clara moved to Arlington Heights, Illinois, at the age of four.

She earned both a Bachelor of Science and a Master of Science in Computer Science from Stanford University, graduating with honors. Furthering her studies, she was awarded a Marshall Scholarship and obtained a Master of Science in Internet Studies from the University of Oxford.

Big break in life

n 2009, Clara co-founded Hearsay Systems, a global customer engagement software company, where she served as CEO. Under her leadership, Hearsay Systems became a leading advisor cloud company, empowering over 150,000 advisors and agents with AI-assisted automation

Her network

When you look at the institutions someone has been part of, it gives you a window into their network, and who they might know.

• Stanford
• Oxford
• Goldman Sachs
• Microsoft
• Google
• Salesforce
• Hearsay Systems
• Starbucks
• Meta

Quotes we like

Great work, professional relationships, and learning experiences compound over time, much the way money does—investing $100 today creates much more value than investing $100 a decade from now.

When startups succeed, they do so against all odds. In the beginning, you have nothing except for your own talents and resources. By definition, everyone else is bigger, further along, and more established than you. To win, you have to swim upstream early on—and that requires hard work and long hours. There are no shortcuts.

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