My journey to the half century mark has been a winding path paved by refugee experiences, creative pursuits, digital innovations, and family life.
The Wonder Years
My earliest memories are fragments from our refugee camp, burned into my three-year-old mind like faded photographs. I can still smell the fresh fruits mixed in with fermented fish from the camp’s markets. I recall our family’s bus ride into the city—a rare adventure from camp life—and my impromptu decision to stay aboard when everyone else offloaded. What happened next exists in two parallel universes: in my memory, I got off somewhere and was found by my father, brother, and cousin near a river. But family lore tells that I simply rode the bus back to camp. Perhaps it was a dream that merged with reality, or perhaps a three-year-old’s perception simply rewrote the narrative. Either way, this early independence (or misadventure) seems fitting for what would become a life of exploration.
These early experiences as a refugee have profoundly shaped my creative perspective. My stories often reflect my Lao background, combining cultural elements that might otherwise be lost to time. This connection to heritage led me to establish Sahtu Press, a non-profit publishing company dedicated to helping Lao authors share their voices with the world. Beyond publishing, I’ve committed time to community events across the United States, working with organizations like Lao Heritage Foundation, Kinnaly, and Legacies of War to preserve and celebrate our culture.
The Creative Awakening
My tweens in the late 80s were brightened by the glow of Saturday morning cartoons. I became a methodical student of animation, pausing my VCR to trace characters from our tube TV screen. The local library became my art school, where I’d photocopy pages from art books to study at home. My determination led me to enroll in the Art Instruction Schools mail correspondence program from Minnesota—sending drawings back and forth, collecting feedback, and dreaming of creating worlds on paper that could move people the way I’d been moved.
In college, joining the Satjadham writing group transformed my creative and cultural connections, strengthening my storytelling abilities among like-minded peers. Remarkably, these literary connections led me to meet the woman who would become my wife—proof that art not only shapes our creative lives but our personal journeys as well.
The Digital Life
College in my twenties started with a singular focus: becoming a comic book illustrator. I entered as an illustration major with superhero dreams, portfolio in hand. But the digital revolution was just beginning, and I found myself drawn to new possibilities. Electronic media opened doors I hadn’t imagined—animation without countless hand-drawn cells, websites that could reach audiences worldwide, videos that could be edited and re-edited until perfect. My passion for storytelling remained, but the medium expanded beyond paper and ink.
My technical journey began with basic HTML and grew exponentially from there. What started as simple markup evolved into complex development as I embraced PHP to build Chord-C.com, my guitar chord learning site. Working with jQuery and vanilla JavaScript gave me foundational knowledge of Object-Oriented Programming. Later, determined to create my own iOS application, I took classes at Stanford to master Objective-C—each language building upon the last, each project expanding my capabilities.
The Career and Family Man
My thirties brought the balance of career advancement and family beginnings. As a front-end developer in Chicago, I built digital experiences while simultaneously experiencing the greatest creation of all—my first daughter in 2004. The end of 2010 marked a significant shift as Silicon Valley welcomed me with opportunities in product design for mobile applications. I was both terrified and excited when we packed for California life. Startup culture pushed me to innovate faster, think differently, and build for the future. Amid this professional whirlwind, I circled back to my illustration roots, publishing my first children’s book in 2013, the same year my second daughter was born—a beautiful convergence of life’s creative outputs.
Silicon Valley didn’t just change my career trajectory—it completely rewired how I approach creative projects. The product design methodologies I was immersed in daily started seeping into my children’s book process in ways I never anticipated. User personas became character development. Journey mapping translated to plotting a child’s emotional arc through a story. The iterative testing we did with apps? I started doing the same with my book drafts, reading to groups of kids and watching their reactions at specific moments (nothing humbles you faster than a five-year-old’s honest feedback). I found myself storyboarding books like we did digital features, creating empathy maps for different age groups, and solving narrative problems with the same design thinking frameworks we used for user experience challenges. It was like discovering that two languages I spoke fluently could actually combine into something even more powerful. My tech colleagues thought it was odd that I applied A/B testing concepts to different story endings, but those product design tools helped me create books that connected with kids in ways my art-school training alone never could. Looking back, I realize I wasn’t just juggling two careers—I was building a bridge between them.
I cannot discuss my professional growth without mentioning John Picha, a mentor who profoundly shaped my trajectory. We first connected at the start of my career where he hired me at Encyclopedia Britannica; We went on to work together across three companies. John, a comic book artist who attended the prestigious Joe Kubert School before transitioning to web design, helped cultivate my confidence, refine my artistic abilities, and develop my critical thinking. His guidance bridged my artistic aspirations with practical career development—a connection I treasure to this day.
The Crafty Forties
My forties brought unexpected stability when I remained at one company longer than I’d anticipated. This consistency provided space to nurture personal projects—developing apps, creating more children’s books, and even releasing a short comic based on my own intellectual property. Without the constant pivot of startup life, I could take deeper breaths and longer views, focusing on craft over speed and sustainability over immediate impact.
Raising two daughters during this decade has enriched my creative perspective immeasurably. They see the world through fresh, curious eyes that challenge my established viewpoints and inspire new directions. Their unique personalities and imaginations have even sparked a story based on their characters—another example of how parenting and creativity feed each other in an endless cycle of inspiration.
The Future Focused Fifties
As I stand at the threshold of my fifties, the creative landscape is shifting dramatically with AI and automation. While I’ve been exploring these new technologies, I remain convinced that when the AI hype winds down, there will always be demand for human discernment—the taste and style that comes from a professional’s touch, gut instinct refined through decades of practice, the patient methodical work that technology can’t conjure up algorithmically, and the typographic mastery that comes from years of studying how letters flow together on a page.
When I consider what legacy I hope to leave for my daughters and others, it’s not simply finished works, but something more fundamental: evidence that creative energy deserves release. I want my stories, designs, and applications to demonstrate that perfection isn’t the goal—authenticity is. Showing the world who you are, imperfections and all, matters more than flawless execution. If my journey inspires others to share their unique voices, particularly those from underrepresented communities like mine, that would be the greatest achievement of all.
Perhaps this next decade will blend my accumulated technical skills with my original artistic passions in ways I can’t yet imagine. Maybe I’ll further expand Sahtu Press to amplify even more diverse voices. Or perhaps I’ll finally complete that graphic novel that’s been simmering in my mind since those Saturday morning cartoon days.
Whatever comes, I’ll carry forward the resilience of that refugee child, the curiosity of that cartoon-tracing teen, the adaptability of that college student discovering digital tools, the balance-seeking parent building both products and a family, and the focused craftsman of my forties—all chapters in a story still being written, one creative endeavor at a time.