Background
Chan was born in Braintree, Massachusetts, and grew up in Quincy, outside Boston. She grew up speaking Cantonese and served as interpreter for her grandparents.
Chan was born in Braintree, Massachusetts, and grew up in Quincy, outside Boston. She grew up speaking Cantonese and served as interpreter for her grandparents.
In 2003, she graduated as class valedictorian from Quincy High School, and was voted "class genius" by her classmates. She graduated in 2007 with a Bachelor in biology, and also studied Spanish.
In December 2015, they pledged to donate 99% of their Facebook shares, valued at $45 billion, to the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, a philanthropic and political action company that focuses on health and education. Her parents were ethnic Chinese refugees who fled Vietnam in refugee boats. She has two younger sisters.
She is the first college graduate in her family.
After graduation she taught science at the private Harker School for a year, before entering the medical school of the University of California, San Francisco in 2008. She graduated in 2012, and finished her pediatric residency in the summer of 2015.
Chan had previously had three miscarriages, which Zuckerberg wrote about in a Facebook post. Zuckerberg and Chan have pledged about $1.6 billion to charities, including a donation of $75 million to San Francisco General Hospital, where Chan worked.
In 2013, they gave 18 million Facebook shares (valued at more than $970 million) to the Silicon Valley Community Foundation.
The Chronicle of placed the couple at the top of its list of 50 most generous American philanthropists for that year. They also pledged $120 million to public schools in the San Francisco Bay Area. Chan"s charitable goals focus on education, healthcare and science, which are closely tied to her personal background.
She plans to launch The Primary School in 2016, a nonprofit organization that will provide K–12 education as well as prenatal care, in East Palo Alto, California.