Tiffany Yu is a social impact entrepreneur and community builder.[2] She is the CEO & Founder of Diversability, an award-winning social enterprise to rebrand disability through the power of community. She is also the Founder of the Awesome Foundation Disability Chapter, a monthly micro-grant for disability projects that has awarded $22,500 to 23 projects in 6 countries. She also serves on the Leadership Committee to plan for San Francisco's first Disability Cultural Center.[7]
Early Life & Education
In 1997, when she was 9 years old, Tiffany Yu got into a car accident. As a result, she has brachial plexus palsy (nerve damage) in her right arm.[3]
Yu received her Bachelor's degree in Finance & Accounting from Georgetown University. She later earned her Master's degree from the London School of Economics & Political Science.[1]
In addition, Yu was the recipient of a full scholarship for the New York Code + Design Academy's full-time web development program. While there, she became a full-stack web developer with JavaScript ; she also worked with Squarespace and WordPress.[1]
Career
Tiffany started her career in investment banking at Goldman Sachs , working on over $14 billion of announced transactions. She has been a member of the World Economic Forum Global Shapers Community since 2015. She was also the Director of Business Development for Sean "Diddy" Combs' Revolt TV.[1]
Diversability
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In 2009, Tiffany founded Diversability, a social movement that fosters communities to rebrand disability by encouraging people to connect, showcase, and think critically about disability as a core part of the diversity conversation.[13] Founding it while she was in her senior year at Georgetown, Yu won the 2009 Reimagine Georgetown Grant as a result of the creating the movement. Diversability's community grew to almost 400 members through 2014.[1]
Yu re-launched the brand 2015 and has since held the title of CEO.[1]
She founding the company, Yu has been featured in Marie Claire ,[4] The Guardian ,[5] the The Wall Street Journal, and Forbes ,[6] and has spoken at the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting in Davos and Stanford University .[7]
In 2018, she gave her first TED Talk entitled, "The Power of Exclusion." In it, she explains what can be the most challenging aspect of disability, and how it's propelled her into a life of community building.[+] In 2019, she gave her second TED Talk, "The Truths About Being A Pioneer."
Awards & Accomplishments
Tiffany Yu has been named one of the "100 most influential Asian Americans of 2017," one of the National Disability Mentoring Coalition's Hall of Fame (2018),[14] and a "women of influence" honoree.
