About Joel

Joel is a enlisted Marine Veteran, first generation college student, and Stanford lifer (BS, MSCS, MBA), also known as the human embodiment of "taking the scenic route" through higher education. While at Stanford, he was a five time head teaching assistant for Hacking for Defense, the flagship public sector entrepreneurship class; an interdisciplinary AI/ML researcher somehow trusted by the Office of Naval Research not to break anything; and a remarkably normal 23 year old freshman. A "strangely qualified" admit, according to his admissions file, he has personally coached and mentored over 100 non-traditional students (Veteran, formerly incarcerated, high-school dropouts, under-resourced international), helping them gain acceptances to Yale, MIT, Princeton, Stanford, Harvard, and more. As an adoptee from Korea, he intimately understands how having -- and not having -- family stories affects one's sense of belonging and identity; as a Veteran, he understands the transformative power of storytelling to navigate and process hardship; as a generalist who is mortified of the label of dilettante, Joel is now currently building a company seeking to make oral history/family story capture more accessible and develop data ecosystems that can effectively debias and align advanced AI systems. His interests lie in performing improv and standup comedy, patting himself on the back for a hole-in-one Wordle in 2023, and staring at the ceiling at 2 AM while pondering moral philosophy, occasionally concluding that he should probably buy a more interesting ceiling.