BIO
Richard Yan was born in central China as the elder of a pair of twins. With his family, he moved to Shenzhen at the call of the Open Door Policy, as his parents pursued opportunities there. He and his twin brother, Robbie Yan, attended a gifted program of fast-tracked education, for which they underwent rigorous training in maths and sciences and won a number of awards in contests. They moved to the US for high school, after which Richard attended Dartmouth and Robbie attended Stanford. Upon graduation, Richard worked in mortgage strategies at Goldman Sachs and on trading platforms at Two Sigma. Outside his work, Richard enjoys puzzle solving; he designed a New York City-based escape room named “59:59 Room Escape”, which he eventually sold. He also runs two podcasts, “Chinatown 2.0” and “The Blockchain Debate Podcast”, to foster intellectual conversations about Asian American identity and the future of blockchain technology and AI.