Tricia Chan is a Business Builder, Strategist, Advisor, and Board member with 20+ years of experience in strategic advisory, branding/brand strategy, CRM, and product marketing. Her time in tech and finance has led her to develop a passion for “ventures that intersect powerful sustainable technology and the analog world” with a particular interest in “re-imagining very broken systems with thought and pragmatism”. This passion is largely what inspired her to begin working with Ahura AI which she refers to as, “one of the only really, truly sustainable ventures”. Having seen the good, the bad, and the ugly sides of the tech world, Tricia has found a home as the CMO of Ahura AI amongst founders and a team that “…want to leave the world in a better place overall”. 

Tricia views learning as a practice that is, “…vital to life and accomplishing things”. In her words, “Learning is everything. It’s, I think, fed by curiosity. So I think instilling a value of curiosity and a kind of fearlessness around trying to find the answer is what learning is all about.” Tricia takes particular enjoyment in learning with others.When the opportunity arises, she enjoys, “…sharing ideas, discussing, and getting into righteous debates with people as they try to prove out whatever their thesis might be on a particular topic.” It is a very social and sensory approach to learning that Tricia appreciates and tends to go for whenever she can, especially in the state of Covid. 

Outside of group discussion, Tricia’s preferred methods of learning are reading and listening to podcasts. Over the past 3-4 years, she has gotten into a rhythm of listening to podcasts but still prefers reading to anything else. Despite her preferences, Tricia says that her chosen method of study is usually dependent on the type of content she is trying to learn. She breaks it down like this, “There’s the bigger part of learning” which consists of more complex and abstract concepts that we are interested in for personal reasons, “…and then there’s very task specific urgency learning” which usually consists of more work related or need based knowledge. For “the bigger part of learning”, Tricia prefers reading to anything. She finds that there is, “…a pleasure factor with reading [making] it a little indulgent”. It not only fosters a deeper sense of understanding for Tricia, but it also allows her to enjoy the learning process more so than other available mediums. For more urgent task specific learning, Tricia finds that digital content is usually the most effective and readily available.

Additionally, Tricia finds early mornings and later nights to be the best times of day for learning. As she describes it, “I think I’m probably a little more under duress or less focused during a work day than I would be at six in the morning or nine at night”. She finds that early and late hours allow her to focus more purely with less interruptions. She also finds super late hours of the night to be great for writing because its typically the most quiet part of the day. 

Tricia’s learning style has allowed her to be easily served by existing popular teaching methods, but she recognizes that these models do not serve all learners equally. In discussing Ahura and the potential impact of our products on the world, Tricia spoke extensively about underserved communities in terms of education and the potential impact that increased access to knowledge and learning solutions could have. This is largely what inspired her to work with Ahura and where her passions lie in terms of education. As someone who has seen personal friends struggle with their academic experiences because they are different from the people around them, Tricia is passionate about helping develop a solution that can be tailored to and work for all learners within the parameters of their individual capabilities and preferences. As she puts it, “If we could save people who feel like outsiders and [help them] have some sort of place where they feel like they belong, that they’ve created and helped co-create…Wow, that’s massive. That’s why I’m here”.  She went on to say that, “Ultimately, if we do our job well, and every license we sell, we donate one in kind to an underprivileged community in the United States or elsewhere, I could absolutely see that being revelatory and life changing.” 

What do you think the impact of increased access to learning solutions in the United States and abroad would be? How can Ahura AI bridge the access gap in education? Could you personally benefit from a more personalized and accessible learning environment? Let us know in the comments or in a #HowILearn post of your own and be sure to tag @ahuraai. We’d love to hear from you!

Author: Alex Murray, Operations and Client Success Intern, UC Berkeley ‘23