Women Who Reign: Emily Yu

“Simple things should be simple, complex things should be possible.” — Alan Kay

Tell us about yourself along with a fun fact!
I’m currently a senior at Palo Alto Senior High School, and the founder of PalyHacks (http://palyhacks.io/), an international hackathon that brings together students from China and the United States. By expanding our reach outside America, we’re providing an opportunity for talented young programmers from the east and west to exchange ideas and create innovative solutions for everyday problems. In the coming years, we have plans to expand outside of China and the US to create a richer pool of talent and unite the brightest minds across the world to combine their ideas on problem solving.

What # would define your life journey?
I would have to say #justdoit. You never know what you can do until you try it! Before I began dabbling in programming, I was baffled by the complexities. On a daily basis, I would hear people throw around words like machine learning, neural networks, and deep learning, and wonder if what universe they hailed from. Then, I thought I would try learning what some of these mysterious phrases meant, and they began to seem more in reach. I…