She has written for outlets including WIRED, MIT Technology Review, the Los Angeles Review of Books China Channel, Foreign Policy, China Books Review, Rest of World, Project Syndicate, ChinaFile, Nikkei Asia, Forbes, and others. She writes a newsletter on science, technology, and history in China called The Long Game.

She has worked at or consulted for the United Nations, Trivium China, the Paulson Institute, the Asia Society Policy Institute, the National Committee on US-China Relations, Stanford University’s DigiChina, the Berggruen Institute, and others.

She holds an MsC in Contemporary Chinese Studies from the University of Oxford, where her dissertation focused on discourse of state-sponsored depictions of China's role in World War II (The War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression). She completed the Inter-University Program at Tsinghua University in Beijing and studied abroad at Qingdao University. At Bard College, she double majored in East Asian Studies with a focus on Chinese language and literature and Written Arts.

She has lived, worked, and studied in the People's Republic of China and traveled through Taiwan. She speaks and reads Mandarin Chinese.