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Priscilla Chan (Zuckerberg) Is a Product of Her Experiences As an Outsider

Priscilla Chan
Priscilla Chan

By Ed Diokno

In a rare interview, Priscilla Chan explains how her goals and the goals of her husband, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, were shaped by her personal story.

Usually, she prefers to stay in the background while her famous husband basks in the limelight. But the Bay Area News Group was able to get an exclusive interview with one-half of the most richest couples in the country.

The daughter of immigrant parents who were among the boat people who fled communist Vietnam, Chan grew up in Quincy, Massachusetts, a community with hardly any other Asian Americans.

“My identity, I felt, was so distinct. I felt very much like an outsider. My family didn’t have the same rituals that everyone else seemed to have,” she said.

Being an outsider and having to work harder for acceptance became part of her DNA through high school and college and now in her career as a pediatrician in the San Francisco Bay Area.

While at Harvard, she began working with the kids from housing projects It was an eye-opening experience and made her realize that all the tutoring in the world was not going to make the housing projects a safe place in which to grow up.

RELATED: Chan & Zuckerberg to start charter school for disadvantaged youth

She found the same situation in the Bay Area’s East Palo Alto and that led to her and Zuckerberg, founder of Facebook, to found a charter school in the tough neighborhood that will provide more than the 3R’s for its students.

To read the entire interview, click here.

 

(Ed Diokno writes a blog :Views From The Edge: news and analysis from an Asian American perspective.)

(AsAmNews is an all-volunteer effort of dedicated staff and interns. You can show your support by liking our Facebook page at  www.facebook.com/asamnews, following us on Twitter and sharing our stories.)

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