Hi, I'm Kai.

"Since working with Kai, I feel like I have been empowered to an even greater degree. Normally Product Managers are seen as the "Force Multiplier" for the business, but I feel like working with Kai has been the opposite. Kai doesn't shy away from a meeting or conversation with anyone, and always asks great clarifying questions. They will even go so far as to scope out tickets for me and lead the team through heavy technical discussions, and have saved me so much time and allowed me to focus efforts elsewhere that I have had to put off. To me, this serves as a great example of a leader, as they are working to help people outside the confines of those they collaborate with on a daily basis. Kai also maintains an EXTREMELY positive attitude about seemingly everything. When things are shit, and everyone is stressed, Kai always finds a way to keep themselves positive, and focused on the things that are going well. I feel that this kind of attitude becomes contagious, and it forces people to do the same, and I even find myself feeling a little more positive knowing I have Kai on my side coming into work, and things won't be so bad as a result. Lastly, Kai feels like a good person, more than just a co-worker. I never feel anxiety or any negative emotions whenever I get a DM from Kai, and I'm always excited to answer because I know Kai is either going to have an insightful thought/question/idea about work, or be willing to joke around to lighten the mood, and banter a bit back and forth, but never crosses any boundaries or lines."

"Kai is a supremely motivated individual with whom I've had the pleasure of working ever since they were hired out of a programming bootcamp way back in the summer of 2019. Kai levels up their knowledge quickly, leaving no stone unturned. This has served them very well as tech lead: the thoroughness and detail with which they prepare documentation and break down the work into tasks, and the manner in which they comport themselves when disseminating the information to other engineers. This instills a lot of confidence in the team because they understand the work, and they know that Kai's got their back. More generally, Kai is an absolute rock for the team. They're very reliable and responsive, and do a wonderful job of balancing delivery of story items against their other, higher level obligations. They're good about asking for help when they need it; and they're happy to pair with others to unblock them. I want to call out Kai's attentiveness towards matters of inclusivity. While we were porting the main marketing site from Wordpress, Kai identified tooling to test for and familiarized themselves with standards for accessibility, and helped make them part of the best practices and CI/CD for our most public-facing frontends. During our hackathon week, they successfully implemented customer-facing tooling to collect user pronouns to promote social inclusion. I admire Kai for their incredible thoughtfulness, and their willingness and ability to meet others where they are."

"Kai is an absolute shining star on the development team. I have never met someone with so much passion and initiative to take on such in-depth research in order to identify solutions for problems raised to them, even outside of their own responsibilities! Their advocacy for the partnership between design and development has been critical to the success of the design system, and I could not have done it without them!"

"Kai is the epitome of a team player. They have an ease of personality that allows them to get along with everyone, paired with an honest moral compass; they are a team member who is looking out for the good of everyone in the organization, and working to ensure that workplaces are a safe and inclusive atmosphere for all. Kai leads by inspiring others to be the best they can be and helping them to reach their goals, while working hard to better themselves along the way. If you have a problem, Kai will have a myriad of creative and thoughtful solutions. It was an honor and a pleasure to work with Kai, and I can say with absolute confidence that any organization would surely benefit from their positive presence, skills, and commitment."

"Working with Kai is so wonderful because they bring so many things to an organization's mission and to a team: passion, commitment, a collaborative spirit, creativity, innovation, intelligence, perseverance, kindness, compassion. I have learned so much working with Kai - most outstanding is what it means to jump into something you don't know, and to figure out how to achieve it. Anything that is given to Kai, they tackle. They are someone I can depend on, someone I can trust. Kai is also so fun to work with. All of this together makes Kai an amazing person to have on your team."

"In my 10+ years of working at Addgene, Kai was easily one of the sharpest, hardest working employees with whom I've worked. Most employees are either "big picture" people or "detail oriented", but Kai could transition between both states with apparent ease. Whether they were managing a project, process, or a team of people, their ability to identify pain points and create viable solutions to those pain points was enviable. I would hire them again in a second."