Stiletto Network

Living an Aha! Life

From an “aha! moment” a company called AHAlife was born.

Of course, Mei now needed money. She was young, still at the start of her career, and not in a financial position to fund her own firm, and she wanted to see if the concept appealed to those outside her demographic. To test viability, she started reaching out to businesspeople she knew. Her idea was intriguing, they said, but it was Mei’s personal story that sealed the deal.

Mei’s parents were English professors from China, and they’d left Shauna at home with relatives in 1989 while her father served as a visiting scholar at Brown University. But after the Tiananmen Square massacre occurred, it was deemed unsafe for academics with American ties to return to Beijing. ...