From Piano Prodigy to FemTech Founder: Sylvia Kang's Journey with Mira
"Starting a business in the US is like being locked in a freezer—hard to break the ice, hard to fit in."
Charles Zhang once said this to Yu Minhong, perfectly capturing the loneliness and alienation many Chinese entrepreneurs face abroad—an unfamiliar environment where it's difficult to be seen, heard, or understood.
But one woman from Chengdu is rewriting that narrative. Over 140,000 women across 120+ countries have used her invention—Mira—to accompany them through one of life's most intimate and emotional journeys: fertility.
Before founding Mira, Sylvia Kang had already won multiple international piano competitions. She later earned a B.S. in biomedical engineering from the University of Pittsburgh, an M.S. from Columbia University, and an MBA from Cornell University.
She spent nearly a decade at a Fortune 500 life sciences company, managing over $100 million in global business. But when she witnessed the struggles her friends faced on their fertility journeys, she realized just how broken and opaque the women's health system—especially fertility care—truly was. This harsh reality drove her to found Mira: a portable, AI-powered at-home hormone testing device that replaces blood draws with urine tests, providing women with lab-grade, personalized cycle insights.
Sylvia Kang has proven through her own experience that Chinese women entrepreneurs can create miracles, even from thousands of miles away.