Building what the future
can trust.

An introduction

I learned to shape my own path.

I’m Sarah Mao—legal name Ziqi Mao—a first-generation university student whose path to higher education became unconventional when COVID began. I spent four years learning from home as a homeschooler, without the usual classroom schedule or milestones to tell me what should come next.

That experience taught me to create structure for myself, follow questions beyond a syllabus, and keep moving when the route was uncertain. It also gave me room to become a creator: I documented my life on RED and Bilibili, learned to tell stories for a real audience, and developed the quieter practices that still ground me today—Chinese calligraphy, painting, baking, and latte art.

Today, I study Computer Science and Finance at the University of Calgary and work across AI research, software engineering, entrepreneurship, and community leadership. I am interested in both sides of an ambitious idea: how to make the system rigorous, and how to make it useful and trustworthy for people. I hope to build technology that expands what feels possible while becoming the kind of leader who helps other people do the same.