On a mission to build a kinder world through creativity, psychology, and innovation.
Hi! My name is Helen, a passionate music creator, psychology student, TEDx speaker and designer/entrepreneur. Growing up across three continents and many other in-betweens, I believe in the power of weaving bridges between disciplines, cultures, and souls, and in building worlds where connection and empathy can flourish.
I approach well-being explicitly as a design problem, building at the intersection of signal processing, affective computing, psychophysiology, interactive technologies, and HCI. My practice lives between augmenting tenderness x designing support systems and immersive experiences conducive to connection and repair.
As a composer-performer-technologist, I’m entranced by how a single progression or timbral shift can make someone feel seen to the core. As a psychology student and researcher, I study architectures of safety and repair, the cues that help bodies soften into connection, and the survival patterns that push us toward protection/exile. As a designer and founder, I build systems that expand access to education and care to help humanize and connect.
Composer-performer-producer working across multimodal musical systems.
As a composer, pianist, vocalist, and songwriter-producer, I’ve been lucky to explore many musical worlds—from contemporary classical to music production, from opera and theater to multimedia storytelling. What ties it all together for me is the belief that music can heal, empower, and connect across boundaries.
I am a NextNotes Music Creator (American Composers Forum), a Morton Gould Young Composers Awards finalist (ASCAP Foundation), and an Honorable Mention for the Luna Lab Fellowship (Kaufman Music Center). My work has been performed by the Cassatt String Quartet, Mivos Quartet, PRISM Quartet, Walden School Players, and members of the International Contemporary Ensemble. As a film composer and sound designer, I have collaborated with an Emmy-winning director, Prague Film School filmmakers, and a Cannes-award-winning media agency. My passion for composition and music tech has been shaped by the guidance of mentors such as Daniel Felsenfeld, Hans Thomalla, Michael Smidi Smith, Chris Mercer, Liliya Ugay, Jae Deal, Ania Vu, Marcos Balter, and Ian Underwood.
Performance remains the heartbeat of my musical endeavors. As a pianist, I've performed with Lang Lang, premiered original work at Carnegie Hall, and received first prizes at the Hong Kong-Asia Piano Open and Korea-Asia Piano Open. As a conductor, I’ve led the USC Thornton Chamber Orchestra and the Vienna Boys Choir. As a vocalist, I’ve sung across opera, choral, and new music premieres, and worked extensively in electronic production and collaborative sessions, experimenting with the voice as a malleable tool for texture, storytelling, and emotional transmutation.
Exploring wellbeing mechanisms & story-data interactions through psychology.
Studying psychology, I’m especially drawn to understanding the systems that make us feel safe, connected, and alive. At Northwestern’s labs, I explored how dreams, memory, and life stories shape our inner worlds—conducting EEG dream research and coding hundreds of autobiographical narratives to investigate how people express joy, meaning, and growth, and how these invisible systems carry into mood, creativity, and well-being. I also worked with Littl, an early-stage parenting tech startup, translating developmental psychology into scalable digital resources for families.
With role models like Esther Perel and Irvin D. Yalom, I see psychology as a platform for healing, empowerment, and growth. I love weaving research into artistic processes—incorporating insights from dream science, narrative identity, and cognitive architectures into the music I write, building bridges between science and creativity.
Building and scaling support through design, teaching & entrepreneurship.
Beyond music and psychology, I build human-centered infrastructures for creativity, belonging, and learning, where trust, attention, and agency are treated as core design variables. Across ventures in education technology, social computing, and family support, I use a consistent method: research → interaction principles → rapid prototyping → evaluation (data + story) → iteration, translating lived experience into systems people can actually enter and sustain. This work spans designing cross-cultural, neurodiversity-aware music programs (Sunflower Education), prototyping AI as a creative learning partner (DjAI), and building privacy-sensitive tools for peer connection during the pandemic (ConnectEd).
At Littl (Techstars SF), I helped translate developmental psychology and attachment theory into product decisions and engagement systems, learning how profoundly tone, timing, and interface shape care. Co-founding and running the Heart of Cubs nonprofit, I build community programs and benefit-concert infrastructures for children and families navigating disability and crisis. Across these projects, my focus has become clear: support is an interface problem and a systems problem. I’m interested in how we can design tools, rituals, and environments that reduce friction, protect dignity, and expand people’s capacity to create, connect, and heal at both intimate and scalable levels.
Mission
I’ve always sought connection across different worlds and found my home in the in-between. This journey has given me a perspective shaped less by distance than by curiosity and empathy. I once shared this on a TEDx stage, speaking about cultural exchange through music, and I continue to pursue projects that weave diverse anchors into spaces of belonging.
Whether through a piece of music, a classroom, or a startup, I want to design spaces where people can feel at home in ourselves and with each other. I am on a quest to build bridges, believing firmly in the power of art, science, and innovation to nurture a kinder world.