We’re excited to share that Yvonne Chen has joined Pavilion!
Yvonne graduated from UCLA with a degree in CS, having led groups like ACM@UCLA focused on increasing technology accessibility. She has interned at Facebook on the Civic Integrity team, working on identifying coordinated harassment against at-risk individuals, and has also interned at Stripe on the Alternative Payments team. She loves working across the full stack from frontend UI to data, and strongly believes in working in technology for social good.
We asked Yvonne a few questions about herself and the experiences that led her to Pavilion.
Why Pavilion?
Lots of reasons! It’s extremely important for me to be working towards positive social impact that persists institutionally at scale. That belief aligns incredibly well with Pavilion’s mission of improving and working with government, in contrast to the (generally speaking) technology industry’s focus on solving problems through purely private sector means. On top of that, Pavilion is early stage, tackling applicable technical problems, and has such a talented & fun team — I felt like this was an opportunity I just couldn’t pass up!
What do you like to do when you’re not working?
I’m somewhat limited by quarantine, so I’ve mostly focused on two new hobbies: cooking and catching up with friends on Zoom! I love cooking asian food — I’m Taiwanese so I try to learn from a lot of my family’s recipes, like sesame oil chicken noodle soup, as well as Japanese like sukiyaki and oyakodon. I also have a lot of friendships from early college to high school that I haven’t done a great job keeping up with throughout the years, so I’m trying to make an effort to call them more consistently during this time.
What was a kindness you received recently?
I’m getting a puppy corgi from a genuinely caring breeder in a few weeks. I’ve just felt like he’s done so much to be involved through the entire process! There hasn’t been just one instance of kindness, but lots of them, from recommending food, to letting me visit and spend hours playing with the puppy before picking her up.
What’s a goal you have for the year ahead?
A small, hobby-related goal is to get good at card counting! I’ve always loved cards as a kid, and now that I’m in quarantine I’ve been looking for ways to get better at a lot of traditional card games like blackjack and poker.
