GARY SHENG

New York, NY

Civics Unplugged is a 501(c)(3) social enterprise and digitally-powered community that provides leaders of Generation Z training, funds, and support to build the future of American democracy.

In January 2020, we launched the CU Fellowship, which is our six-month, digital-first leadership program through which 200 exceptional high school-aged leaders, representing every region of America, come together to learn systems thinking, personal development, and participatory democracy.

The Fellowship culminates in the Fellows coming together in June 2020 to launch "Civics 2030," a national campaign to mobilize funds and support for leaders of Gen Z to spearhead projects that strengthen American democracy.

New York, NY

My team worked on building amazing user experiences for Google Cloud users. I helped carry out the top-to-bottom redesign and implementation of Cloud Datastore's UI, and then led the front-end team of Google's Cloud SQL product. March 2017, we launched our PostgreSQL offering – which increased Cloud SQL's total addressable market by ~40%. April 2019, we launched our initial SQL Server offering - which is poised to increase Cloud SQL's total addressable market by ~$6B.

Los Angeles & New York

Dancing Pineapple curates electronic music and hosts concerts in New York and Los Angeles. Our goal was to share music and experiences that make people happy. A portion of the proceeds from many of our events went to supporting youth music education via Little Kids Rock.

Durham, NC

Duke presented unprecedented scale and diversity of opportunity. My four years of phenomenal professors across the disciplines pushed me to expand, challenge, and adjust my worldview. My experience dancing with DefMo showed me the power of empathetic leadership and expanded my artistic comfort zone. My tenure throwing major, campus-wide events validated that quality stems from attention to detail. My junior fall semester abroad at London's UCL humbled me to explore my place in the world. My engagement in Duke's tech & innovation initiatives exercised my creative muscle, sparked my obsession with design, and strengthened my tolerance to adversity.

Duke showed me what I love to do, gifted me with a love for learning, and surrounded me with a wealth of inspiring peers.

New York, NY

This summer was a rite of passage into software engineering professionalism. Google's crash-course seminars opened my eyes to exciting new fields, the customer-driven culture taught me that empathy matters so much, time well spent. Developers and designers blew me away with their willingness to share their time and wisdom. The trust my teammates placed in me did wonders for my confidence in writing quality software. I continue to be inspired by this company today.

Palo Alto, CA

Flipboard taught me to surround myself with people who pushed me to my limits. The summer hacking alongside brilliant engineers, shadowing masterful designers, and helping direct projects laid the foundation for my software-engineering career. I'm grateful for the time I spent with these folks, whose work gave me a glimpse into the challenges and rewards of a startup employee's life.

San Francisco, CA

I was the first, lucky intern to work with Pocket's small, brilliant team. During these couple of months, I queried SQL data to create user analytics reports, implemented initiatives to guide product launches using A/B test results, designed Google Analytics dashboards, aided with community support, and participated in the product design process. This startup crash-course of a summer flooded me with opportunities to osmose bits of wisdom from founders, engineers, investors, and other leaders of the Valley.

Aurora, IL

I'm grateful for these three years away from home. IMSA was where I learned how to articulate my ideas (as head of the school newspaper), competed thrice in state championships (as tennis captain), fell in love with learning, facilitated service events for the local community, designed a leadership development program for underclassmen, and discovered a passion for the arts.