Priscilla Chan is an American pediatrician and philanthropist. She is the wife of Mark Zuckerberg, the co-founder and CEO of Facebook. As of 2015, she and her husband have pledged more than $1.6 billion to charities.
Priscilla Chan is best known as Mark Zuckerberg’s wife but there are a lot more interesting things about her that you should learn!
Read them here!
1. Priscilla Chan grew up in Quincy, Massachusetts, a town outside of Boston. Her parents immigrated to the United States in refugee boats.
2. She was born in Braintree, Massachusetts as the daughter of Chinese-Vietnamese refugees.
3. She went to medical school at the University of California, San Francisco.
4. She is a pediatrician.
5. She met Zuckerberg at one of his fraternity events. The two began dating in 2003.
6. She is cofounder and CEO of a new nonprofit private school in East Palo Alto called The Primary School, due to open next year.
7. Her name is attached to a new limited liability company – the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative — to fund nonprofits and “[participate] in policy debates” that help “advance human potential and promote equality.”
8. Chan gave her first national TV interview to The Today Show’s Savannah Guthrie last year, but up until then had avoided media appearances and posting publicly to her Facebook page.
9. She grew up speaking Cantonese and served as a translator for her grandparents, who didn’t speak English.
10. Chan graduated from Quincy High School in 2003 as class valedictorian, and her classmates voted her “class genius”.
11. Chan attended Harvard University from 2003 to 2007, where she met and started dating Zuckerberg. She earned a BA in biology and studied Spanish.
12. According to her Facebook profile, she moved to San Jose, California, after graduation and worked for a year as a science teacher for fourth and fifth graders at the Harker School, a private school.
13. Chan then started medical school at the University of California, San Francisco in 2008.
14. She graduated around the time she married Zuckerberg, which was on May 19, 2012, the day after Facebook went public.
15. She is fluent in three languages. Chan can speak English, Spanish, and Cantonese.
16. Chan’s charitable goals are tied closely to her personal and professional backgrounds: mainly education, healthcare and science. Together with her husband, Chan has donated more than $120 million to school systems, educational nonprofits and hospitals over the past few years.
17. Most recently, the couple donated $75 million to San Francisco General Hospital’s new trauma center and acute care wing named after them. The two also gave out awards for the Breakthrough Prize, a nonprofit organization they helped launch that grants winners $3 million for various scientific achievements.
18. Chan said she has no problem with the trademark clothing item her husband dons nearly every day. “He has graduated to a nicer hoodie. The main quality about this hoodie that’s nicer is that it’s softer, so he’s really excited about that,” she told Savannah. “I’m happy with whatever he wants to wear, as long as it’s appropriate for where we’re going. So he can’t wear it to weddings. And he can’t wear it to baby showers. But he can do whatever else he wants.”
Read More : Why Mark Zuckerberg wears the same T-shirt everyday ?
19. She and Zuckerberg say they will give away 99% of their shares in the company to good causes as they announce the birth of their daughter Max. Mr Zuckerberg made the announcement in a letter to Max on his Facebook page. He said they were donating their fortune to the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative to make the world a better place for Max to grow up in. The donation amounts to $45bn (£30bn) at Facebook’s current value. However the shares will not be donated to charity immediately, but over the course of the couple’s lives.
20. She first met Zuckerberg while waiting in line for the bathroom at a Harvard fraternity party. The party was thrown by friends who thought Zuckerberg was about to get kicked out of school for a prank he had pulled. “I thought he was just this really interesting guy, who really wasn’t that studious,” she said. “On our first date, he told me that he’d rather go on a date with me than finish his take-home midterm. The type-A first child in me was appalled,” she said.
21. Her husband, Mark Zuckerberg, was just 20 years old when he founded Facebook in 2004.
22. Her mother worked two jobs her entire childhood.
She was not from a great background, but she shows that it doesn’t matter what happens in the past when you are striving for the future.
Priscilla Chan : 22 Interesting facts about Mark Zuckerberg’s wife!
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