Yichen is a business builder, educator, and finance professional with over a decade of experience mobilizing resources to solve hard problems and create beautiful things. She has dedicated her time and energy to helping early/growth stage entrepreneurs find product-market fit, starting a public primary school in Hayward, California, advising tech companies like Yahoo! and Snap at Goldman Sachs, teaching middle school design thinking, founding a small-batch tea company, and many other pursuits that integrate the personal and professional.

Most recently, Yichen was a private equity investor in ed tech and future of work companies at a firm where she was employee #1 and created the impact strategy from scratch.

At CED, Yichen continues to build as an educator and strategist in the role of Managing Director of Capital Strategies, helping individuals and institutions see past our current systems and self-limiting beliefs to invest in a just economy by integrating Social Movement Investing frameworks, Solidarity Economy principles, and her expertise in capital markets.

Yichen currently lives in Oakland, California. She spent her formative years split between Shanghai, China where she was born and the multicultural and working class communities of East Los Angeles.