Angelina Saiyi Li MBA ’24, who jokingly refers to the airport as her hometown, is a woman on the move. Her fast-moving professional life — from child model to reality show host to media firm CEO — recently entered a new phase with the launch of her tech firm, WangWang Health. She aims to make the mobile and web app company, which originated as a student-led senior design project and is currently in beta testing, a one-stop social media platform that integrates healthcare, wellness and aesthetic services. 

One important mission of the company, says Li: to help lower-income individuals reduce healthcare and self-care industry costs through education, access to fixed price services and comprehensive access to providers. 

A Guangzhou native, Li’s early work as a child model in China eventually led to her becoming a cover model for high-end brands such as Gucci, Dior and Ferragamo. Capitalizing on her experiences in fashion, she moved on to produce and host China’s first health-based reality show, “How to Become Gorgeous,” from 2018 to 2021, which had approximately 60 million views per episode. 

Amid her early career success, Li, who is a 2007 graduate of Communication University of China, says, “I wanted to learn the story behind the brands I was working with, so I started my own media company.”  

So in 2016, she founded LYRRA (a play on the Italian lira currency), a media and public relations consulting firm. The company created China’s first national restaurant award and first national restaurant guide, and also produced a monthly fashion magazine. Under Li’s guidance, LYRRA also led Microsoft’s commercialization project for AI Xiaoice, an AI chatbot. 

Continuing to seek new ways to advance her career, Li landed at Stevens in the fall of 2022 to pursue an MBA with concentrations in STEM and finance, while focusing on artificial intelligence. She also learned Python programming while serving as president of the Graduate Women in Business club. During her tenure as president, she was pivotal in bringing Hou Lihong, Science and Technology Counselor of Consulate General of the People’s Republic of China, to Stevens to provide the keynote address at the New Tech Trends in China event in April 2024. She also made a gender bias presentation at Stevens’ annual LeadHERship Conference. 

 “Women should support women,” Li says. “I want to become an icon, a lighthouse to light the path for future generations of women.” 

– Charles O'Brien