On February 24, 1985, Chan was born in Braintree, Massachusetts, and grew up in Quincy, Massachusetts, a suburb of Boston. Her parents were Chineserefugees who fled Vietnam in refugee boats. She grew up speaking Cantonese and served as an interpreter for her grandparents. She has two younger sisters. In 2003, she graduated as class valedictorian from Quincy High School and was voted "class genius" by her classmates. According to a Facebook post by Mark Zuckerberg, Chan is a Buddhist.
Education
Chan entered Harvard University in 2003, where she met and began dating Mark Zuckerberg. She graduated in 2007 with a Bachelor of Arts in biology and also studied Spanish. She is fluent in Cantonese, English, and Spanish. She is the first college graduate in her family. After graduation, she taught science at the private Harker School for a year, before entering medical school at the University of California, San Francisco in 2008. She graduated in 2012 and finished her pediatrics residencyin the summer of 2015.
Personal life
Chan married Zuckerberg on May 19, 2012, the day after Facebook's stock market launch. On July 31, 2015, Zuckerberg announced that he and Chan were expecting a baby girl. He said he felt confident that the risk of miscarrying was low so far into the pregnancy, after Chan had already had three miscarriages. Chan and Zuckerberg announced the birth of their daughter Maxima Chan Zuckerberg on December 1, 2015. On August 28, 2017, Chan gave birth to their second daughter, whom they named August.
Chan Zuckerberg Initiative
Zuckerberg and Chan have pledged about $4.6 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 to the Silicon Valley Community Foundation. The Chronicle of Philanthropy 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. On December 1, 2015, Chan and Zuckerberg posted an open Facebook letter to their newborn daughter. They pledged to transfer 99 percent of their Facebook shares, then valued at $45 billion, to the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, which is their new limited liability company that focuses on health and education. Chan's charitable goals focus on education, healthcare, and science, which are closely tied to her personal background. She is considered to have had a strong influence on the philanthropy of her husband. She planned to launch The Primary School in 2016, a nonprofit organization that would provide K–12 education as well as prenatal care, in East Palo Alto, California. She was one of six nominated for The San Francisco Chronicle’s third annual Visionary of the Year award in March 2017. The award honors leaders who strive to make the world a better place and also drive change by employing new, innovative business practices.
