Month: September 2021

Vivien is a Principal on Pear’s investment team. At Pear, Vivien invests in founders who are mission-driven and who hope to improve the world we live in with technology. She brings her love for building communities through launching Pear’s Founder Circles starting with female technical founders. 

She joined Pear full time after getting her MBA from The Wharton School, where she studied Entrepreneurship and Innovation and Healthcare Management. She learned the ropes of venture capital as a Pear Fellow at Penn’s campus for two years. During her MBA, she interviewed healthtech leaders as the co-host of The Pulse Podcast by Wharton Digital Health and lead Community and Social for 600+ Wharton Entrepreneurship Club members.

Prior to business school, Vivien worked on BizOps, New Products and Growth for Airbnb, and was a consultant at The Boston Consulting Group focused on defining innovation and growth strategies for leading healthcare, consumer and technology companies. She received a Bachelor of Science in Industrial Engineering at Northwestern University.

“Pear is where all brilliant founders should go when they have a passion to solve a problem, an MVP and are in between the 0 to 1 stage. The team works tirelessly together to support the founder through both the greatest and most challenging times.

I wanted to join and learn from a team that puts founders first and supports one another like a family.”

Outside of work, Vivien loves spending time in the outdoors, skiing on fresh powder, cycling through California’s hills, cooking Taiwanese food, and admiring art in all forms.

Connect with Vivien on Twitter @vivho or come say hi in our San Francisco office! 

Richard joins Pear as Chief of Staff to our managing partner, Mar Hershenson, and Director of Pear Accelerator. In his role, Richard is responsible for planning and operating the accelerator program, helping our portfolio companies with business development, fundraising, operations, and supporting Mar’s overall daily workflow.

“I joined pear because of the alignment and heavy double-down on community organizing. I am excited to be working with passionate and ambitious early-stage founders with big ideas!”

Prior to Pear, Richard fell in love with the venture world during an internship with Pillar VC. He completed his PhD at MIT Mathematics under Prof. Gilbert Strang, where he focused on the physical modeling of microfluidics. During his PhD, he also worked with Massachusetts General Hospital on using efficient ML algorithms to optimize hospital operations and has published in high-impact journals such as Nature.

Outside of work, Richard is a community organizer at heart who cares deeply about the mental health and well-being of students and entrepreneurs. Together with six MIT grad students and postdocs, Richard co-founded FAIL!, a nonprofit aimed to de-stigmatize failures and foster psychological safety in hyper-competitive workplaces. 

Say “hello” to Richard on Twitter @richardczhang.