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November 13, 2026

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Vera Li, a Founding Product Designer at Gemini Legal and creator with over 260,000 followers, has won four international design awards for her social app concept, Season.

Inspired by her experiences across China, Singapore, and the United States, Season explores a different way of building online communities.

Unlike traditional social platforms, Season’s communities dissolve and re-form every 30 days, allowing connections to evolve as people do.

Building Communities Across Borders

Vera received Gold at the London Design Awards and Tokyo Design Awards, along with Silver at the MUSE Design Awards and NY Product Design Awards. Her concept, Season, challenges how traditional social platforms work. Instead of keeping people in the same online communities indefinitely, Season’s communities dissolve and re-form every 30 days, allowing users to connect with people who reflect who they are at that point in their lives.

The idea comes from Vera’s own experiences of moving between countries and building new connections.

She grew up in a small town in rural Henan, a farming province in central China, before her family moved to Zhengzhou, the provincial capital. At 15, she earned the Singapore government’s SM1 full-ride scholarship and spent four years studying abroad, far from home and everyone she knew. She later moved to the United States to attend UCLA, once again finding herself in a new environment where she had to build her own community.

Each move taught her something about belonging. The people and places around her changed, but she continued finding ways to connect with others.

Finding Connection Through Dance and Design

Dance became one of Vera’s earliest ways of bringing people together. At UCLA, she founded dance teams, organized dance camps across four international cities, and taught dance in Los Angeles.

She also performed as a backup dancer at major events, including the MAMA Awards and KCON, sharing stages with artists such as J.Y. Park, ITZY, IVE, and ZICO. She also shared the stage with AESPA at Long Beach Arena.

These experiences showed her how people from different backgrounds could come together through a shared interest, even if only for a short time.

Vera eventually brought that same experience online. Through @VeraLiStudio on YouTube and @vera_shalala on TikTok and Instagram, she built a community of more than 260,000 followers around dance and movement, connecting people across languages and cultures.

Her interest in building meaningful experiences later led her into product design. She moved to Pittsburgh to pursue a Master of Human-Computer Interaction at Carnegie Mellon University before returning to Los Angeles.

For the past three years, Vera has worked as the sole Founding Product Designer at Gemini Legal, a legal technology company. She has led design initiatives for several products from concept to launch, most recently the company’s legal drafting tool, DraftEngine.

Working as a one-person design team also meant creating a design culture of her own. When she noticed a lack of opportunities for designers in Los Angeles to share their work and connect, she organized “Designers in the Age of AI,” an event that attracted hundreds of designers.

A New Approach to Online Communities

Vera’s experiences across different cities, dance communities, and product design eventually shaped Season.

The concept draws inspiration from the Japanese aesthetic principle Mono no Aware (物の哀れ), which recognizes the bittersweet beauty of things that do not last forever.

Rather than encouraging users to maintain permanent online communities, Season allows groups to naturally end and form again every 30 days. The idea reflects Vera’s belief that relationships and communities can remain meaningful even as they change.

“I have spent my whole life walking into rooms full of strangers and turning them into places where people belong,” Vera shares. 

“Every one of those communities had a season. Some friendships lasted, but the room itself always changed. Season is the first time I designed software that tells the truth about that instead of pretending the room is permanent.”

This fall, Vera moved to San Francisco, marking another chapter in her career. She has also begun a Doctor of Business Administration with a concentration in Applied Computer Science, focusing her research interests on human-centered design and how digital products can better serve their communities.

Her work in design is also opening new opportunities. Vera was recently invited to join the  International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences (IADAS) and will soon begin judging the Webby Awards.

For Vera, the same principle continues to guide her work: great design is always intentional, and the people using it should be able to feel the difference.

Follow Vera’s journey in rethinking digital connections. 

📍 Connect with Vera

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From Prison to Purpose: How Tuan Huynh Brewed Redemption Into VietFive Coffee

When you walk into VietFive Coffee in Chicago’s West Loop, the first thing you notice isn’t the rich aroma of Vietnamese Robusta beans. It’s the energy. Strangers sit shoulder-to-shoulder, conversations spark, and a sense of belonging fills the air. For founder Tuan Huynh, this space is far more than a café. It’s proof that redemption is real.

Tuan didn’t set out to build a coffee brand. He set out to rewrite a life story that once seemed destined to end behind prison walls. Today, he’s not just serving bold coffee; he’s serving hope, heritage, opportunity, and community.

The Darkest Chapter

Tuan’s early life was marked by conflict. Born in Vietnam, his family fled to the U.S. when he was just three years old, carrying little more than hope for a better future. They settled in government housing, where poverty pressed down on daily life. Like so many kids searching for belonging, Tuan got swept into the culture of gangs and drugs. At just 18 years old, barely an adult, his life took a devastating turn.

Convicted of first-degree murder, Tuan was sentenced to life in prison with the possibility of parole after 15 years. He spent the next decade and a half in Lansing Correctional Facility, one of the country’s maximum-security prisons.

Prison has a way of stripping people of their identity. For many, it cements a cycle of despair. But for Tuan, it became the crucible where transformation began. “Even in the darkest places,” he says, “I knew my story wasn’t finished.”

Choosing Creativity Over Despair

Inside those walls, during the latter half of his prison experience, Tuan chose to reimagine his life. He leaned into art and design, creative outlets that gave him purpose and revealed a talent for visual storytelling. Every sketch, every concept was an act of defiance against the idea that his future had already been written.

When he was finally paroled on June 21st, 2011, a date and time he still recalls with reverence, Tuan stepped into a world that had changed beyond recognition. He was a free man, but freedom didn’t come with an instruction manual. He carried the stigma of incarceration, the weight of lost time, and the daunting task of rebuilding from scratch.

A Door Opens in the Most Unexpected Place

Determined not to waste his second chance, Tuan pursued higher education, earning a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Conceptual Design. His portfolio caught the attention of the world’s largest advertising agency, which offered him a role in Chicago. For a refugee kid who had once been told he would never amount to anything, it was validation.

But something was still missing. After eight years in advertising, Tuan felt the pull of something deeper, something personal. On a trip back to Vietnam, the first since leaving as a child, he discovered his family’s legacy: generations of farmers cultivating Robusta coffee. That revelation ignited a vision.

Coffee, he realized, could be the perfect medium. It wasn’t just a drink. It was heritage, resilience, and connection poured into a cup. And with that, VietFive was born.

Tuan Huynh (right) with his uncle

Building VietFive Against All Odds

Launching a business as a formerly incarcerated person was no small feat. Doors closed before Tuan could step through them. Banks hesitated, investors doubted, and skeptics assumed his past would define his future. But Tuan refused to let rejection write his story.

Instead, he built VietFive from the ground up, importing beans from his family’s farm, shaping the brand through design, and pouring his heart into creating not just a business, but a movement.

VietFive is vertically integrated, meaning Tuan controls the process from farm to cup. That ensures authenticity, quality, and fair practices. But more than that, it provides every sip tells a story. A story of Vietnamese resilience. A tale of personal redemption.

The Power of Representation

For Tuan, VietFive is not just about coffee. It’s about representation. Too often, the stories of immigrants, refugees, and formerly incarcerated people are missing from mainstream narratives. By building VietFive, Tuan created a stage where those voices can’t be ignored.

“When people drink our coffee,” he says, “I want them to taste more than flavor. I want them to taste legacy, survival, and pride.”

That representation extends to the community VietFive has built. Walk into the café, and you’ll see it as a true “third space” where all are welcome. From business leaders to students, from immigrants to lifelong Chicagoans, VietFive has become a gathering point for connection.

Turning Pain Into Purpose

Tuan’s proudest achievement isn’t revenue numbers, though VietFive is on track to approach seven figures this year. His real pride is seeing familiar faces return, watching conversations unfold, and knowing that his café has become a home for many.

The struggles he faced, incarceration, rejection, and underrepresentation, didn’t vanish. But he reframed them. Each obstacle became a stepping stone, each “no” a chance to persist, each bias an opportunity to prove that transformation is possible.

In Tuan’s words, “VietFive is not just about beans. It’s about belonging.”

A Vision for the Future

Tuan’s mission is clear: to elevate Vietnamese Robusta on the global stage, to create spaces of connection, and to rewrite narratives that society often overlooks. He envisions VietFive not only as a coffee brand but as a global movement rooted in heritage and social impact.

For the Asian community, VietFive stands as an affirmation, proof that their culture, history, and voices belong at the table. For those who carry the weight of incarceration or failure, it’s a beacon of hope that broken beginnings can lead to beautiful new chapters.

Redemption in Every Cup

At its core, VietFive is more than coffee. It’s a story of redemption steeped into every brew. It’s the story of a refugee child who stumbled, a prisoner who refused despair, and an entrepreneur who now builds bridges where walls once stood.

When you sip VietFive, you’re not just tasting Robusta, you’re tasting resilience. You’re part of a narrative that proves our past does not define our future.

As Tuan Huynh himself puts it: “VietFive is my second chance in a cup. And I want every person who walks through our doors to feel that same possibility, that no matter where you’ve been, there’s always a way forward.”

Connect with Tuan Huynh

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