Jessica Chao: Co-Founder of LingoHealth

In 2018, over 67 million US residents spoke a language other than English at home. Many of these people may have limited English proficiency and struggle to navigate the healthcare system. Jessica Chao wants to change that. She’s the co-founder of LingoHealth, a platform that helps every patient, regardless of language or culture, have a healthcare experience they can trust. 

Jessica and I spoke about her experiences translating for her family when she was growing up, the evolution of her Asian American identity, and starting LingoHealth. 

Photo courtesy of Jessica Chao

Rebecca: Can you tell me about your upbringing, especially regarding your Asian American identity? 

Jessica: I grew up in the suburbs of Dallas. There were definitely Asian Americans around, but it’s very different from the Bay Area, where I now live. My friends and I joke that there's been an Asian American Renaissance in my hometown. There are new Asian supermarket chains now, whereas when I was growing up there was one Asian supermarket and it wasn’t a big chain like H Mart or 99 Ranch. 

I always felt acutely Asian American. My parents had immigrated from Taiwan and they expected me to speak Chinese at home, but also to speak good English at school. I met most of my friends outside of school through our temple or Chinese school. A lot of my friends were also Mandarin-speaking Asian Americans, and in general, I found myself gravitating to other Asian Americans.

Rebecca: Growing up, how did you feel about being Asian American?

Jessica: When I was younger, I was always very proud of being Asian American and felt like it was a secret that I could share with people with similar identities. But I also understood that people who weren’t Asian American might not understand us and might see us and our identities as a threat. 

One particular story comes to mind that describes how I felt. I grew up feeling cool and confident that I could be fluent in another language. In sixth grade, I was in class with one of my Asian American classmates. We somehow got on the topic of bopomofo, which is like the Chinese alphabet. We got so excited about this memory of learning bopomofo in Chinese school years ago that we decided to recite it right there in class to each other. Everyone in class was also talking, but midway through as we were reciting it, our teacher was like “who is just making noises right now?”. We were shocked. We went from feeling like we had a cool, insider secret to realizing that people don’t get what we’re saying and might think that what we were doing was punishable or not worthy of being in this classroom. 

Rebecca: I saw on your Medium story that you used to translate for your family and other members of your community. When you were younger, how did you feel about experiences like that? 

Jessica: Growing up, translating for my family and others felt very normal. It felt like another task on my to-do list, similar to making my bed. I realized early on that even my parents - who were well-educated, had jobs in the US, and had been in the US for a long time - were still hindered by their accents in terms of credibility. Of course, it’s even harder for folks who can’t speak English at all. But it wasn't until later that I felt indignation towards society for making systems that would enable this mentality and barriers. 

Rebecca: As you’ve gotten older, how has the way you view your Asian American identity changed? 

Jessica: I’m pretty in touch with both my Taiwanese and my American sides. As I’ve gotten older, it’s been important and eye-opening for me to learn more about Asian American history. That’s probably had the biggest effect on how I view my identity now compared to when I was younger. We as Asian Americans often don't talk about and aren’t educated about our own history. In Texas, that was definitely not part of the curriculum. It’s important to understand that there have been Asian Americans in this country for centuries, and it is not a new experience. It might feel new, because that's what the media portrays it as. But we don't talk enough about what it was like when Asian Americans came over to work on the Transcontinental Railroad. In college, I took an Asian American literature class that helped contextualize the historical trends and my voice in America.

Rebecca: Do you resonate with the term “Asian American”? 

Jessica: I've always identified with the Asian American identity. Growing up, most of my friends were Asian American and I had friends whose families were from India, Sri Lanka and other parts of South Asia. Saying I am Taiwanese American comes with loaded political connotations, especially when speaking to folks with ties to Mainland China. “Asian American” always felt the most right to me, given how I see myself in the world.

Rebecca: How did you start working on LingoHealth? 

Jessica: I spent the first four years of my career working in finance, healthcare, and social impact. I’ve known about this problem that we're working on with LingoHealth for as long as I can remember. The turning point was a couple of years ago when I worked in digital health investing and went for a walk with a friend. I mentioned it was great meeting founders, but I was frustrated that so many were white men solving problems that I didn’t find particularly meaningful or impactful. I talked to my friend about the intersection between healthcare, social impact and my personal interests. I said that if someone came in and pitched me on a technical solution to help limited English proficient patients, I would be so excited. It dawned on me that no one's actually going to create this, so maybe I need to be the one to do it. I had this idea tucked in the back of my head, and it was my go-to answer when someone asked me if I had any startup ideas.

When I was in business school and taking entrepreneurship classes, I spent time researching this problem. With COVID-19, language access in healthcare has only gotten worse. Today we’re building a team that is passionate about this problem and being at the intersection of healthcare, impact, technology, and business. I'm excited to see where it goes next!

Rebecca: Was there a turning point when you decided to pursue LingoHealth more seriously or was it a series of smaller moments that led you to that point? 

Jessica: I heard a phrase recently that when you pluck a chicken feather by feather, they don't realize until they're naked. If you had told me four years ago when I started in healthcare investment banking that that path would ultimately lead me to starting my own company helping limited English proficient patients navigate the US healthcare system, I wouldn’t have believed you. There wasn’t one “aha!” moment, but rather a series of smaller moments stumbling into healthcare and figuring out entrepreneurship in business school. It's been a series of fortuitous events that came together.

Rebecca: What progress have you made with LingoHealth so far? 

Jessica: We're currently in stealth mode, and we’ve been working on a pilot test with leading practices, clinics, and hospitals around the US. One piece we’re really excited about that is public-facing right now is the advocacy and awareness campaign that we're running on social media. Time and time again, we’ve heard doctors, patients, and family members say that limited English proficiency patients frequently don't understand their rights. They don't understand that they can have access to an interpreter or that they’re allowed to ask questions. These conversations made us want to build an advocacy campaign that spreads the word and highlights and translates resources for limited English proficiency patients. The Civil Rights Act says you can't discriminate based on national origin. As it’s interpreted for healthcare, if you are a patient, you should be able to ask for care in the language you prefer. 

COVID-19 is an excellent example of why public health resources need to be in multiple languages and accessible to a broad range of people. I've seen stuff on social media debunking myths about the vaccine. The same myths are being sent around Asian social media channels, but none of the information debunking these myths are in Chinese. That’s a place we realized we could step in. We're really excited about growing the awareness and advocacy campaign, especially for limited English proficient patients. We are launching VaxMyFam.org at the beginning of March to help provide more multilingual resources to people trying to get loved ones the COVID-19 vaccine. 

There are three core target audiences for our content. First is limited English proficient patients themselves. The second is their family and caretakers. The last demographic is people who work in healthcare. It's important for doctors, nurses, physician's assistants, and other healthcare professionals to be aware of these issues and their own biases and understand how they can improve the lives of their patients. While our content is important for everyone, those are the three groups we’re focused on. 

Rebecca: How has working on LingoHealth made you reflect or think differently about your Asian American identity? 

Jessica: It's been a good reminder about how broad the term “Asian American” is and how Asian Americans relate to one another. We’re focusing on language right now, and it underscores how fragmented the Asian American community is. Even for Chinese Americans, there are so many dialects beyond Cantonese and Mandarin. It’s interesting to trade notes with my co-founder who is Hispanic American. Her community is largely unified by language, whereas there is less unity in the Asian American community. Within the Asian American community, people have different experiences with English. An Indian American may have a different experience with the English language, given the history of colonial rule in India, than someone who is Taiwanese American. 

Rebecca: What has been the most challenging part of working on LingoHealth? 

Jessica: Working on a startup is certainly very nebulous. I came from a structured career path in investment banking and then in private equity. In finance, you know you're supposed to do this task and if you do it well, you will likely get a good review, and then likely get promoted. Entrepreneurship and startups are different.

One of the bigger frustrations is when we talk to people, mainly those with no personal connection with this problem, who have the misconception that English proficiency is strictly tied to income or education. Very biased things like that really irk me. But we’ve learned to arm ourselves with the right data points such as, according to the Pew Research Center, 43% of immigrants who've been in the US for over 20 years are not proficient in English. That's something that we are slowly trying to combat and we're hoping additional conversations will open people's eyes. The bias in how people view immigrants and English proficiency is rampant.

Rebecca: It seems like two potential issues with going to the doctor as an Asian immigrant are: 1. Language barriers can create trust issues between patients and doctors and 2. Some Asian immigrants may prefer Eastern medicine over Western medicine. Have you run into either of these issues? 

Jessica: Eastern versus Western medicine is a big question and we're not here to just push Western medicine. We’re here to increase access to healthcare for all patients, and not choose what patients do with this increased access. 

Trust is so important in healthcare. One thing we've seen over and over again from anecdotes and personal experience is that people build trust with doctors by bringing people they trust with them to appointments. That person could be their son or daughter or a friend who is more fluent in English. As we build LingoHealth, it’s important that we include family and caregivers. It's not just about making sure people take medication, but also making sure that people feel that this medication will serve them. Having that trusted figure remind a patient about going to their annual physicals or getting the COVID-19 vaccine is essential. We don’t want to say patients should only take Western medicine, but rather our priority is to give them access and start to answer their questions.

Rebecca: What are your goals for LingoHealth in 2021? 
Jessica: One of our goals is getting a product into the hands of patients. We are actively working on pilot tests with different clinics, so I’m excited about that. Another goal is to start raising funding. Having been on the investing side for most of my career, it's exciting to be on the other side now.