Born in Taiwan, this alumna moved to New York at the age of two. As a student, she gravitated toward physics, and when a high school science teacher recommended Caltech, she decided to check out the Institute.
“They sent a full professor, Jerry Pine, to interview applicants,” she remembers. “He not only interviewed me, but he actually set up a meeting with my physics teacher, who was completely bowled over.”
That level of attention, along with meeting students who would become lifelong friends during a Prefrosh weekend, convinced this alumna to move across the country to pursue a bachelor’s degree in engineering.
In her first year, she failed a physics final exam in a course taught by Pine, who also served as her first-year advisor. While some answers were technically correct, Pine wanted to see a more thoughtful approach in her logic. The lesson she learned from that experience stayed with her.
“Years later, I was able to change careers by being able to think things through and to pick up new skills,” she says. “Those are all seeds that Jerry Pine sowed when he failed me.”
This alumna also served as editor of the California Tech and delved into her Chinese background through humanities courses. As a senior, she received the Thomas J. Watson Scholarship, which enabled her to visit China for a year post-graduation.
“That turned out to be a life-changing year for me, just like coming to Caltech was life changing,” she says.
After spending the first two years of her career as a microchip designer in Silicon Valley, she found herself back in Asia, working in Hong Kong as an engineer. In 1988, she moved to Beijing to work as a sales engineer and met her future husband. When he was transferred to Hong Kong in 1992, she went with him, transitioning to work on the finance and investment side of the technology industry. Today, she lives in the Bay Area and remains active in the technology sector investing in Asia and the US.
In honor of her upcoming 40th class reunion, Lily Wu (BS ’85) and her husband, John Moffly, recently included Caltech as a beneficiary in their estate plans to help support the next generation of scholars.
“Caltech has given so much to me,” Wu says. “I want to make sure that other people have the kind of opportunities that were given to me.”
She says that financial aid helped her to graduate unburdened by loans, and she hopes to extend that support to students today.
“Everything starts with education,” Wu says. “It’s so much more than what we know, it’s how we live.”