A Career in Diplomacy, Influence and Impact with Wenchi Yu
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Welcome to the New Voices podcast. I'm Chani Zhu, New Voices chair and communications consultant. And I'm Solarina Ho, a journalist and your co-host for today's episode. New Voices celebrates the brilliant women shaping how we understand China today through their writing, research, and in-depth reporting.

Today, we're thrilled to be joined by Wenqi Yu, someone whose career reads like a roadmap for meaningful behind-the-scenes diplomacy. She's worked at the State Department and U.S. Congress, advised Secretary Hillary Clinton, led corporate engagement at Goldman Sachs, helped expand education access in China through edtech, and most recently launched her own podcast and nonprofit.

And full disclosure, Wenqi is also an old friend from our Beijing days, back when we were dreaming up ideas over cocktails and panels that we were on. So Wenqi, welcome to New Voices. We're so happy to have you. Yeah, thanks so much for having me. Obviously, you guys have been doing this for a long time, so very honored.

honor to be on the show. Yeah, thanks for joining us. It's been a long time coming. So when she before we get into your current projects, like your podcast perspectives, I'd love to start with your why you've had this incredible cross sector journey spanning diplomacy, finance, media, and now nonprofit work. What is the through line here? What motivates everything that you do?

As I get older, I do feel that it's a life, almost like a quest for meaning in my life. And, you know, at the end of the day, it is getting to know who I really am, my own identity, my values, and how I belong to this big part of the world. And so yes,

Finding meanings and doing things that I find helpful and useful, whether it's ideas or my experience, is very important. And so I would say,

looking and searching for meaning in life, perhaps. It sounds like a cliche, but that's genuinely how I feel. I just wanted to rewind a little bit. You started your career on Capitol Hill and then moved into the U.S. State Department, serving as senior advisor to Secretary Clinton in the Office of Global Women's Issues. That must have been a really powerful and formative experience. What did you take away from that chapter, both personally and professionally?

Yeah, actually, I would...

Go back even further, I wouldn't consider myself starting my career in U.S. Congress. As you guys probably know, I actually was born in Taiwan. I grew up in Taiwan. And during my upbringing, and this tells you how old I am, in the 90s when I was growing up in Taiwan, Taiwan was going through this democratization. And so I was at the age of very...

being very curious about, you know, just Taiwan as a place, a country, what it really means and its relationship with China, with the rest of the world. And, you know, of course, my own identity as well. I'm a Hakka originally, and it is an ethnic minority in Taiwan. So I never feel like I'm the majority. So the question about Taiwan,

you know, minority, majority, fairness, justice, identity, always on my mind. So I was pretty active when I was in Taiwan being part of the democratic process. And of course, you know, in the year of 2000, there was the first non-KMT president that was elected in Taiwan.

by the Taiwanese people democratically. And so that was a very pivotal moment in my life. And so when I actually went to the US to pursue further studies,

You know, all these questions matter to me. Right. And beyond just this Taiwan, China question, which comes down to identity at the end of the day, is something I'm very, very interested. And so that was part of my graduate school study as well. And then after I graduated from school, I was very, very interested in the world beyond Taiwan and China. Right.

And I was very intrigued by various, I would say, schools of thoughts. So, you know, feminism has always been something of my studying since college. And a lot of sort of the non-mainstream ideas, not just realism, not just idealism, but feminism.

I would say the third way of thinking of the world, it just seems very interesting to me. And so I also wanted to be part of the real world that's practicing those ideas. And so actually my very, very, very first job out of school was in the U.S. in Chicago working with refugees, immigrants, and labor rights people.

And that experience, you know, real firsthand interaction with people seeking asylum, people who were, you know, domestic violence victims, but they're also immigrants, you know, really helped me understand just the idea of having...

Citizenship, what does that mean? And being part of a proper sort of setting, right? And then citizenship idea. I mean, all these are very, very interesting ideas to me. But, you know, I ultimately like...

you have laid out for me, I'm interested in having greater influence. And so, you know, policies become something I really wanted to be part of because I didn't want to just influence one individual or two individuals. I actually wanted to have greater influence. So that led me to Washington, D.C. And my very first job in D.C. was with

Vital Voices, which is a women's rights organization, women's leadership that was founded by Hillary Clinton. And so that was, I would say, my foray into the Washington, D.C. world. After my

first experience with Vital Voices. And then obviously, I went back to my deep roots, which is China, Asia, Taiwan, those issues, even though I was I spent four years working on super interesting issues from human trafficking, domestic violence, HIV AIDS, and took me to did a lot of work in actually Eastern Europe, and Ukraine, that kind of work was, again, right, enriching, super

exciting and interesting. However, there's always the deep down in me that pulled me back to the Asia world. And when I was with Vital Voices, I got to work with Dr. Gao Yaojie, I don't know if you guys know, which was a famed HIV AIDS doctor who discovered the HIV AIDS scandal in China in the early 2000s. And so we honor Dr. Gao, we

brought her to the U.S. And there was a lot of political issues in between. And so that kind of pulled me back to the China world. So that's why I actually left Vital Voices to join the Congressional Executive Commission on China, which was very focused on China's human rights, civil society development, world law issues. And that was a short stint. And then President Obama appointed

Hillary Clinton as the Secretary of State. And I was very fortunate to be brought into the State Department to work on global women's issues, actually in her office, along with many other amazing people.

Oh, wow. Yeah, I did not know that story before that. But it all makes sense because you've chosen your career path, I think, in terms of being rooted in your identity, like you mentioned, and thanks for sharing that. Did you want to share anything else about working with Hillary Clinton at that time?

I would say started working, you know, with her, under her, or in close sort of vicinity to her orbit since when she was the senator. And, of course, people around her. And the most important thing, looking back, is this idea of challenging sort of the dominant power.

Right. So whether you're talking about women's rights or other issues or equality, essentially,

we're saying just because we're the minority, it doesn't mean we don't matter. We still have a seat at the table. And so I think that philosophy, again, going back to my own identity, really just speaks to me. And so that deeply, deeply influences how I look at the world today. And learning from her and the people around her in terms of how to

advocate for those who may not have a strong voice and whose voice is more on the margin. I think that's what I learned the most from her and her philosophy as well as the people around her. And of course, her leadership and her courage as well. I still say I don't think I can be as devoted to anyone else anymore because what she represents, the symbol of her not just being a woman leader, but

But her courage, her persistence, she never stops. She never backs down. You can knock her down, but she'll come back up again. That's

to the true Hillary spirit that inspires all of us. From there, you made what some might see as an unexpected pivot into the private sector. So you joined Goldman Sachs and led their 10,000 Women Initiative in Asia. How did this come to be? What did the shift in the corporate world teach you, especially about driving impact based on everything that you shared so far?

So interestingly, I never in my life thought I would be on the business side. But when I was in the government, I actually got to work with a lot of private sector actors, all the big companies that was during a time period.

It was a very different world. Obviously, government worked very closely with big corporations, small business entrepreneurs, etc. And of course, my focus was always women to think about ways of opening markets for American companies.

And so Goldman was one of them. And they had a really, really good initiative, 10,000 Women, that was about empowering women entrepreneurs, especially those in emerging markets. And so I got to know the team very well. Dina Powell,

who was leading the initiative later on, became a deputy national security advisor in the Trump administration. So she recruited me when I was leaving the government because in 2013, when Hillary left, a lot of us left as well. So she

recruited me to be in charge of philanthropy and the 10,000 Women initiatives in Asia. And that was a pretty, I would say, natural fit because I was essentially working on similar issues, only in a different outfit, I would say. I was working on it from the government's perspective.

And then moving to the corporate sector perspective. So that was an interesting, of course, you know, China always has that lure to me, even though I had worked on China for a long time and very curious about that place because of my upbringing in Taiwan, but I never...

really lived in China. And so that opportunity was, to me, hard to pass on. Following up on that idea, after Goldman, I understand you took another very fascinating turn joining VIPKID during the boom of online English teaching. It was this grassroots tech-fueled

People-to-people exchange between China and the U.S. And what did that experience add to your understanding of public diplomacy? So when I was at Goldman, as Cheney just said, right, it was sort of the booming time for global collaboration, whether it's through business or any other platform.

sort of sectors. And I got to work with a lot of entrepreneurs. And I guess that's the benefit of sitting at Goldman. But I always felt like I was so inspired by them, but I was just sort of looking from outside.

Rather than being inside, and I'm a person, if you look at my career, I really want to get hands on about things. And so while Goldman offered a great experience, I wanted to go deeper and be part of reintegration.

that fascinating tech booming world in China. And so that's why I joined VIPKID. It was also a great opportunity in the sense that it would bring me back to the United States. And so, you know, after being in China for about three and a half years, and it was sort of the first year of the Trump years, I really, I was yearning to come back to the US and wanted to contribute to

to my country that I felt like I was out of touch with. And so the Amikid provided a great opportunity. So yeah, and it was founded by an amazing women entrepreneur, Cindy Mi, who founded the company in her early 30s and grew the company to be this unicorn and the level of

connections she was building between teachers and students, not just US, China, but also around the world was truly, truly amazing. And I found myself

helping to solve the day-to-day problems primarily between US and China. And a lot of the problems were very similar to those I faced when I was in the government, only the frequency was much higher. But these are real day-to-day problems. And so that's when I learned, wow, this is true diplomacy. This is not sort of some abstract diplomacy.

you know, policy level conversation. This is truly the problems that are happening on a day to day basis when we're talking about whether it's political or cultural differences. You know, how do the two countries people

solve the problems together. And what's amazing is you would think government knows better, but no, people know better, actually, because they're much more practical. An American teacher has to explain certain things to her Chinese student, and the Chinese student is teaching their teachers in America so much more about what is really happening in a Chinese family. You know, they're

parents, the relationships and all that, that was truly an incredible learning in terms of people to people exchanges. And then last time we caught up, you were telling me about your time in Taiwanese television, because I you know, because after a VIP kid, it was COVID. And then I think it was like radio silent for a little bit. But then I learned that you

were actually on TV. How was that stepping into a media-facing role? And can you tell us about what you did there? The world Cheney and I lived in when we were in Beijing kind of is no longer, right? I think the Trump administration...

had a pivot in terms of the U.S. policy toward China. So when I was at ViabiKit, I already felt it. All of us felt it. It was at the height of the U.S.-China tension, especially around technology. So I lived through it as well. I was helping the company navigate a lot of the U.S.-China policy changes. A lot of it is towards technology, security, data protection, etc.,

And, you know, the world was already turning. And of course, COVID came. That literally constructed physical walls, I put it that way, between people. Even with the end of COVID, the walls didn't really come down. The psychological walls collapsed.

are still there even today. I think we still feel it. The world is just a different place. And of course, U.S.-China relations have completely changed. And Taiwan,

is thrust in the middle of it. Taiwan has, in my own words, become the battleground of US-China power competition. It's at the front for many, many reasons. And so a lot of people in Taiwan feel that, you know, does it have to be

either the American way or the Chinese way, or can there be another way? And especially Taiwan being in the middle of it, Taiwan needs to have a stronger voice in the world to tell its own story. So the largest Taiwanese media company, TVBS, the owners approached me asking me if I could help create a program, and it's their very first English program, to

talk about those really important issues, but from the Taiwan's perspective. So that's how I got involved in the media. So basically, I hosted a program for them that is called Meeting Room. And we interview in-depth interview with policymakers, mostly based in the US about US, China, Taiwan and related global issues.

Now you're kind of bringing all these strands together. You've launched the nonprofit Global Women Asia and a new podcast. And it feels like everything you've done career-wise has really been building up to this moment. What's the big vision behind what you're doing now?

Thank you for talking about Global Women Asia, which is truly my, as you said, it brings everything together. I mean, we were talking about post-COVID, right? I felt that even though the traffic has resumed and supposedly to be back to normal, but it's not really. The bigger hurdle to me is this situation.

psychological barriers. And so for those of us who have always led our life as a global citizen, and I myself, I didn't feel quite right about what is happening. And so a few friends and I decided that we wanted to start a nonprofit, a global community to continue to connect people who think alike and want to make sure that

the benefits of connecting people and sharing ideas, working together can continue. That's why we created Global Women Asia. And it's a, you know, global community of leaders with Asian perspectives. And it's for both women and their allies. So which means men, a lot of men are involved as well. I don't want people to think like this is only for women. This is also not

about being Asian. So, you know, having what we say is having the Asian perspective. It's not about your ethnicity or race. It's really about your experience. So a lot of people who are not Asians, but have a lot of experience in Asia, you know, they're part of our community. And likewise, if you're an Asian who's never really had a real experience in Asia, you probably don't feel that you can connect or relate to our community.

So that's kind of an interesting community. But we've been able to have a signature fellowship program for younger women who are on average in their 30s. And these are, I wouldn't even call them rising because a lot of them are already a

entrepreneurs. They're mostly starters themselves. They're entrepreneurs, social entrepreneurs. They are leaders in their own right, in their own community. But the common thread is that they're all global citizens who have Asian perspectives. They could be living in London, born in Mongolia, for example, grew up somewhere else. And these are sort of the features of our community people. We'll be back after a short break.

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And now on with the show. So Wenqi, let's talk about your latest project, Perspectives with Wenqi Yu. What inspired you to launch your own podcast and what kind of conversations are you hoping to spark? Yeah, it's actually very similar to the...

ideas underneath Global Women Asia, which is we want to bring out perspectives that we don't normally hear, at least to myself. And so if you look at today's media, sitting in Washington, D.C. in particular, I'm speaking about myself.

I feel that the voices, the perspectives that we're hearing tend to be one kind. And having spent time in Asia, I know there are so many different kinds of perspectives, even just single issues, right? And I feel that...

That is important. It's not sort of saying one way or the other is right. It's just presenting diverse perspectives helps everybody make better decision and be better informed. And, you know, selfishly speaking, I do think critical issues, very critical foreign policy issues or issues that I care about,

I feel that the perspectives where we tend to hear from the mainstream media aren't as representative as what the real world or what the reality is. And so in a very tiny, small way, I want to highlight that. And while I have other media outlets to do different things, but you know,

They're not my own in that sense. I want something that is completely controlled by myself, the ideas and how I present views. And that's why my show is called Perspectives with Wenchi Yu because I want to bring out different perspectives. So how do you choose your guests? I actually organize it by topics. And these are topics that

Yeah.

And so I pick guests based on people I know who actually have the knowledge and experience. And I don't mean just sort of scholarly type. I tend to prioritize their operational and on the ground experience. And so if you look at my guests, they tend to be the ones who spend a lot of time in the office.

middle of doing things, whether they're lawyers who have done a ton of transactions between U.S.-China tech businesses or they're hedge fund investors who've been spending 20, 30 years watching Chinese businesses or

knowing Chinese tech startups, or there's a series on semiconductors. Similarly, we see a lot of reporting and coverage around semiconductors, but rarely do we have people who spend decades of experience working in semiconductor industry talking about it. I just think these are important perspectives, and these are people who actually

know, but they typically wouldn't be the ones to talk loudly because that's not their job and they may not have the right platform or microphone. And so I feel strongly about making sure their perspectives and voices are being heard.

And we're going to dig in a little bit on the semiconductor in a second. But I wanted to ask, in your podcast, one of the topics you've explored with different guests in China is the AI industry. Seeing what China's done so far in that space, despite U.S. efforts to curb their access to advanced tech through exports controls, that sort of thing, do you think it could ultimately have the opposite intended effect? For example,

Could it drive domestic innovation to the point where China could eventually become competitive or surpass global suppliers and end up in a scenario where China becomes self-sufficient or becomes a global competitor in its own right? What's your...

Yeah, I think the export control policies that started in the Trump administration and really expanded during the Biden administration and probably will continue in Trump 2.0.

have made a real impact. By talking to people working in the semiconductor industry, they really say it's like a choking point. And we've also heard even DeepSeq's founder, Lan Wenfeng, has acknowledged that not having access to the most advanced chips has been the major hurdle to DeepSeq's further development. So we know it's had a real impact.

And the question is, how much will you be able to slow down China's development when it comes to semiconductors and therefore AI? Because

The reason why there is such strong desire to restrict China's access to semiconductors is primarily because we know that chips fuel AI development. And, you know, ultimately, the U.S. still wants to continue and be the top leader for AI because its impact is enormous. And so by talking to even Biden administration officials, they were

would acknowledge that they know China eventually will catch up. But being able to slow them down is still important. And so in that sense, I think export controls do serve an important purpose. The bigger question I have is to what end and what is the ultimate goal? If slowing down China is just temporary, right?

How do we really compete with China in AI leadership and beyond? And I think it's a much, much larger question and also challenge because we know it takes a lot more, right? It is about investing in your people. It is about education, science and technology, education, research and development, right?

Whether it's like government funding for university labs, you know, making sure that you have the right talent pool. And whether it's academia working with the private sector to bring innovations to scale. I mean, there's so much more than just restricting your students.

competitor's axis. I think for someone who believes that focusing on yourself matters more, that is a bigger question I have in terms of this strategy. And everybody always wants that crystal ball prediction, even if they know it's impossible. So you mentioned TSMC and for listeners benefit

benefit. The backstory, I guess, is they had announced plans recently to expand its US investment to $165 billion. That's a B. Building new plants, facilities, R&D centers. So I wanted to kind of dig into that a little bit. The reception in Taiwan was mixed with some expressing concern that

This would ultimately hurt the island's national security and semiconductor industry. Others consider this an insurance policy for U.S. security guarantees and that Taiwan would still retain control of the most advanced tech. Given Trump and his administration's track record with defying norms, upending long-established relationships with allies, that kind of thing, and even testing legal boundaries,

What's your take on TSMC's move or your own views on the changing dynamics, I guess, of these different government powers and that sort of thing?

Yeah, it's hard for me to say since I'm not an expert. But what's really fascinating is everyone is questioning what the future will look like. You know, you can sort of look at specific things, right? For example, what is the TSMC, which is the largest manufacturer of most advanced chips?

will look like because there's a lot of question about TSMC diversifying its concentration in Taiwan to the US, Japan and Germany. So that's one big thing. And then you can also have another way of asking a question, which is developing advanced chips requires so much

R&D and, uh, advanced technologies. And a big part of it is the lithography, right? That helps manufacture the chips and, and ASML, the Dutch company is the only company that has that capability now. And so, uh,

again, is in the middle of all the export control policy to prevent their technology being used by Chinese companies. However, China has also been very focused on developing EUV technology. And we see news about breakthroughs coming out of China here and there.

So the question is, if coming back to this framework of competition or making sure China doesn't catch up, for how long will this continue? Some people say China is lagging behind for at least 10 to 15 years. When it comes to EUV technology, you know, some say for most advanced chips, we really don't know because right now what is out in the public is that SMIC, which is the

again, the largest manufacturing company in China for semiconductors, can produce up to seven nanometer kind of chips, right? Which is not that far behind two nanometers that TSMC can produce. And so there are just all these questions. I think it's really hard to say. And a big part of it does, I do believe, depend on

some of the policies, having the right policies to make sure businesses competitiveness continue is very important. And of course, we hear complaints about not being able to focus on R&D from our

I think it's a very convoluted and very hard question to ask. And it's probably beyond all of us. I feel like the forces up there.

Well, yes. Yeah. Thanks for indulging our wonkiness. But like if you the listeners want to hear more when she talks to a lot of experts about this in much more detail, I would say.

Yeah, I mean, it's a huge question. It's a great question. I think a lot of businesses are grappling with this challenge as well. TSMC is just one of them. And, you know, it's an interesting company. It's been very successful.

relatively unknown until more recently because they do one thing so well, right? Their business model is that they just focus on one thing and they do it so well that no one else can compete with them. And that's their secret sauce. However,

That was a different world when globalization really helped that kind of business model. You just need to be good at one thing and you can sell it to the world. But today, the world is...

trending towards more fragmentation. And so TSMC, I think geopolitics in particular, is the additional factor that needs to be considered. And so TSMC needs to diversify. And it just cannot concentrate all its manufacturing in one island.

you know, from pure business kind of sense, it makes sense to them as well. Of course, it becomes so politicized in Taiwan because of various factors. Some are legitimate, some are more sort of manipulated by politicians. The legitimate concern is

Is moving TSMC or part of TSMC to the US or Japan or Germany a better move because the cost will increase and you don't have the ecosystem, you don't have the right talent, you have to start from scratch. So will TSMC continue to maintain its edge as literally the leader in the world? So that is a very legitimate question to ask. The other question is,

Well, for example, is the U.S. trying to hollow out Taiwan's semiconductor sector and then will just desert Taiwan after having its semiconductors? And then you have all kinds of these debates in public. Again, right, I think my own take is...

TSMC makes that decision for a reason. At the end of the day, factoring to risk as well as cost, geopolitics, that is a better decision for them to diversify and invest in the United States. So the Biden administration has also been very active

was very or trying to be helpful to make sure the cost of TSMC diversification and investing in the US makes sense, makes business sense at the end of its day. But again, I think that's the reality of doing business today, which is it's not just about your balance sheet. It's not just about

growing your revenues, you do have to factor in geopolitics and all these other unknown factors because of the way the world is. And so I think all businesses are learning how to deal with uncertainties in today's world. Looking ahead, what's next for you? Do you feel like you're closer to achieving the vision that you set out with about finding meaning? Or is this just the next chapter?

of what we're seeing that something's still unfolding. I don't know what is like the ultimate thing I am doing, the way I look at what I am doing. And I'm not really a planner, as you guys can see, in terms of career, I tend to be more impulsive. And I feel

follow my heart, what excites me at that moment, what I think matters, I literally jump right into it because I want to be doing it myself. So I'm not a very strategic career planner in that sense. But I do have to feel that I am driven. I don't do things well when I'm not driven. And

The drive in me tends to go back to what I believe is the right thing and what I value in terms of beliefs and values and all that. Yeah, what is next to me? I don't know. I'm just focused on what I'm doing right now. And I do hope that

In a tiny little sense, I'm helping create a world that I myself want to live in, or I'm moving the world closer to that ideal version that I want to see. I also feel like you have been quite strategic in terms of following your values, I think.

you know, a lot of people don't do that. So, so thank you for joining us. So now we're going to move on to recommendations of culture content. So that could be books, art, movies, TV shows, anything that we're consuming currently. So I'll go first. So mine is,

For this episode is the memoir, Careless People by Sarah Wynn Williams. It just came out. I think it's a bestseller in the US. It's a Facebook tell-all of her story.

seven years there, which covered the 2016 elections, actually, which is interesting because she talks about the Trump embed and how that was the Facebook election, basically. And it just really gives an insider's view of the culture at Facebook and like the Silicon Valley culture at the time. I think it does come across as very realistic. And I wish that had come out sooner because it kind of gives you kind of a psychological...

the landscape of how people think and make decisions in that part of the world. So Lorena, what about you?

Um, so my recommendations are from the screen. I have two slightly different ones. One is The Pit, which is a TV show set in a Pittsburgh hospital. And it's actually by some of the same people behind and in front of the camera for ER, if people remember that from the 1990s. And this one is

It's a little bit like 24 meets ER in the sense that every episode is one hour of a shift in the emergency room. And so the whole season is basically the course of one shift. And for me, I guess part of what is compelling is just the fact that it kind of it's set in a post-COVID, as far as you can call post-COVID environment in that, you know, there's

a bit of that trauma from the early days of COVID. The main character lost his mentor to COVID, that kind of thing. And it's a very visceral look at, I guess, the U.S. healthcare system and the lives of these frontline workers. I find it very compelling and moving as well. They do a very good job of

You get to know the people, even though it's just like a snapshot of their entire lives. And then my other recommendation is the Chinese film Ne Zha 2 that became this like blockbuster hit. I watched it with my kids. So I really loved it in that it's rich, layered storytelling that I don't think we really get to see as much with reality.

animated films in Hollywood. And so I recommend both of them. Very different, but

Okay, Wenqi, what's your recommendation? Oh, since I am in Taiwan now, I just went to a museum, a brand new museum. That's Paul Chang Zhangxian Er. It's an art museum in Taitung, which is on the east coast of Taiwan. Very hard to get to because you have to, from where I am, I have to take the high speed railway and then I have to fly and then take the bus. Okay.

I got fascinated by Paul John's work during COVID and I actually bought some prints of his work. So I have been waiting for his work. Highly recommend for anyone who wants to visit the beautiful coast of Taiwan beyond Taipei.

And on to self-care. This is, we kind of do this segment where we talk about how we take care of ourselves these days outside of work. And I will say that I have been really bad with self-care this year, so I have nothing to offer. And I'm here to listen to yours.

Mine is I'm going on a yoga retreat at this end of this week with my sister just right before I start a new job. So I'm excited to just excited to unplug. I'm just going upstate to a town called Cold Spring and there's going to be like Ayurvedic meals and like cooking lessons. So I'm very excited for the itinerary my sister founded. It's basically her yoga teacher.

So I have been doing boxing for the last year. And I don't know if, Chani, you knew from our time in Beijing, I had always been a runner since college. But started last year, I decided to change to something that is different. And it's just been so great for both my body and my mind. I strongly recommend people to try. It's both aerobic and physical.

anaerobic. It's just really good for every part of your body. So yeah, you get to, you know, punch bags and feel you're really powerful. And for women, right? It's self defense as well. And it's fun. So it's just great. Thank you, Angie, for joining us today. Well, thank you for having me.

You've been listening to the New Voices podcast with Chenny Zhu and Solarina Ho. Our producer is Wing Kwong and our editor is Rebecca Liu. Music is by April Zhu. Follow us on Blue Sky at newvoices.bsky.social and on Instagram at newvoices underscore network. Support our activities via Patreon. Patrons are invited to play an active role in our community. Thank you and until next time.