I read, I travel, I become - Derek Walcott
Hello, this is Tiffena! I am a product manager building recommendation systems with NLP and multilingual AI foundation models.
I love travel and reading as they open up the whole world for me to explore different ways of thinking and living. That also fuels my growth as a PM to bridge domains and people, and find hidden trends and opportunities across organizations or industries.
I create this blog to record my learning and observations on various topics:
- Learning: how humans learn and its analogy with machine learning, specifically, meta-learning and transfer learning. Specifically, I am interested in ways to understand a novel concept and break it down to the simplest form for personal growth. By taking a systematic view of the world, I try to see things beyond silos as they interconnect and influence each other. I also enjoy drilling down into the why and how.
- Language: I love to understand a culture better by learning its language. Words carry its history and reflect collective mindsets molded through eras. This preference also influences my professional work in NLP and the more recent AI foundation models, with large language models as my focus.
- Design: it was only after reading books by renowned designers Satoh Taku and Mizuno Manabu that I understood design as means of communication and problem solving, instead of merely beautifying and decorating. Both Satoh and Mizuno reject the notion of designers as artists, but rather a conduit between clients and users. Most importantly, they both carry a sense of social responsibility in their work. I am interested in products and services that employ good design to solve pressing social issues such as aging and isolated society in hyper-developed countries such as Japan. For example, moving away from the stigma of treating elderlies as burdens for healthcare system, to empowered contributors of their lifelong experiences for the growth of the upcoming generation.
- History: Many years ago, I came across a book by history Professor Shih-Hao Lu which he taught history as MBA-style case studies : In critical moments, ask yourself, “if you were him/her, what would you do?”. Think thoroughly and critically. Better yet, discuss with your peers. Through this approach, we can appreciate history as a massive treasury of lessons in strategy, leadership, psychology, etc. The materials enable us to examine how/why people made key choices in crucial moments that affected millions of lives, and the major actors/factors contributing to events and how things evolved in time.
- Consumer trends and Psychology: the historical/social context and psychology of spending, especially in the ultra-fast moving East Asian metropolises.
- Travel planning: not just for me but also my family members and close friends. It’s a bliss to utilize my PM skills in gathering local market information, studying user needs and matching resources to requirements and constraints to plan a trip that is personalized, memorable and budget-fitting!
I hope you can find some gems in what I’ve curated! To keep in touch, you can find me @instagram, DM me, email me hiATtiffena.me, or check out my A4 resume.