Between Two Classes: Chris Yoon

“I was literally on a massage table for six months just listening to podcasts.”

Our latest RC interview is a two for one: Chris Yoon and his friendly black lab, Sadie. Chris, one of the few RCs that juggles a part-time job in addition to full-time coursework, works on accessibility features as a product manager at Uber. His firsthand experience getting into Ubers with Sadie served as inspiration for a feature he launched in February, designed specifically for Uber riders with service animals. Thanks to Chris (and Sadie’s!) hard work, service animal handlers now have the option to self-identify in the Uber app, automatically notify drivers when they’re traveling with their service animal, and get proactive support if something goes wrong. Our conversation with Chris dives into how a traumatic experience catalyzed his career in tech, how he learned English from Harry Potter audiobooks, and why he’ll be diving back into big tech upon graduation. 

What's a challenge or obstacle you faced, that in hindsight you’re grateful for?

Yoon: I’m legally blind. I was born completely blind, and at six months or so, I gained a little bit of sight back. Ever since then, I’ve been the way I am. People always ask me — why don’t you try to get surgery and get it fixed?

When I was little, I actually thought that would’ve been great. Not that there is a surgery that’s currently available, but I thought it’d be great if I could be normal. But the longer that I’ve lived with it, the more it’s become part of me, the more I realized I would actually prefer not to get surgery.

I’ve learned a lot, whether it’s being patient or having to be more prepared than other people because I have to know where things are. For example, when I travel, I’m very much a big spreadsheet person. I need to know where I’m going. I need to map everything out because it’s hard for me to do things spontaneously with Sadie. It’s something that I’ve learned to live with but also embrace. It’s been a big part of my identity that I would not want to give up.

About 10 years ago, I had an incident where my retina got detached. For about six months, while I was going through surgery to fix it, I couldn’t see anything at all. It was a very traumatic experience. The way they do the surgery to fix your retina is to put a buckle around your eye to have the retina stick back to your eye, and then they inject a little oil bubble.

What you’re supposed to do for six months is lie face down on a massage table so that the oil will push up against your eye and put pressure on it so that it’ll stick back to your eye. I was literally on a massage table for six months just listening to podcasts.

At that moment, I realized what a difference small vision makes versus not being able to see at all. For example, I had to relearn how to eat food, go to the bathroom, or just walk around in my house.

I think it was during that time I realized life is very short. That’s when I found my calling. This semester, we’ve been talking a lot about purpose — personal purpose or purpose of the firm. For me, in that moment, what got me through was technology. Being able to use my iPhone with all the accessibility features to listen to podcasts, text and talk to friends, catch up on the news. All of that was facilitated through technology, and I realized that’s had such a big impact on my life.

I wanted to go into that world to see what else I could do to make sure that other people who are going through similar experiences or hardships can also rely on technology to hopefully make that experience better. That was when I internally realized how important and exciting that area was. This happened right before I went into college. That’s what inspired me to start studying computer science, go into the accessibility world, and be where I am today doing the work that I’m doing.

Wow. At 18 years old, you had to lie face down for six months?

Yoon: Yeah, this was literally my senior spring. I had just gotten into Stanford, so I was on top of the world. My life was set. I was like, okay, now I'm going to enjoy my last six months of high school. And then this happened. The only time I would get up was if I had to go to the bathroom and when I ate, so at least 22 hours of the day was spent on the table. I still can’t get a massage — the table's traumatizing for me.

And did you have a sense going into this that it would work?

Yoon: When we first went in, the doctor said, “you might not get your vision back at all.” So there was this sense of unknown. The first surgery, they put the buckle in and put the oil in, and six months later they do a second surgery to take the oil out. And then you can see if anything has happened. That was also a very anxiety-inducing thought of “what if I'm like this forever?”

In hindsight, I’d like to think that I was more optimistic, but it was definitely a challenging time.

There has to be some degree of optimism for you to agree to do this for six months?

Yoon: It was either this or not being able to see at all. So obviously this was the choice I decided to take. It was definitely a tough couple of months. And even after they took the oil bubble out, my eye remained bandaged for some time. When they finally removed the bandage, and I opened my eyes, it was very emotional to see again. I don’t know the exact percentage, but ballpark, I got like 90% of my vision back, which was a miracle. It was hard, but worth it. I’m glad that it turned out the way it did.

And for you to then channel that into the work that you do, and the path that you’ve taken, that’s incredibly powerful. Switching gears a bit, what book, movie, or piece of art has had a meaningful impact on you and why?

Yoon: For me, the book that had the most impact was the Harry Potter series. Not necessarily because of the story. Albeit, I love the story and have gone back and read them countless times. But I actually used it as a way to learn English. When the first books came out, I was still in Korea. My mom would record herself reading the books in Korean. At night, I could listen to her reading the books. I don't think at the time they had Korean audio books, so that was a DIY audio book that my mom made for me, and I got really into the books.

When I came to the States, she kept doing that for me, but also, I found that they had audio books here. I really wanted to learn English and try to not have an accent. I would rent the audio books from the library and read one chapter in Korean and the same chapter in English. I read all seven books in the series, both in English and Korean. And that helped me a lot with getting used to English. The narrator was a British guy, so for the first couple of years, I had some weird British-sounding words here and there. But that was my way to dip my toe into English reading.

It was such an intimate moment with my mom reading those books to me. The fact that I could keep doing that and also learn English. On a similar note, my mom loves Friends, so when we first came over to the States, we brought the boxed 10-season DVD sets from Korea that had Korean subtitles. There were some episodes that she didn’t let me watch, but I watched a lot of Friends after school, which also helped me with understanding American culture a little bit. I’d say those two are the media pieces that really had an impact on me growing up.

Last one: what are your ambitions?

Yoon: As cliché as this might sound, I want to make the world better than I found it. For me, that’s coming from disability access. I quickly realized technology is a solution to a lot of the access issues that people with disabilities face. Big tech is the vehicle through which we can solve a lot of these big problems. When you build something for Google, Uber, or Microsoft, millions, if not billions, of people will use it from day one. That could have a huge impact for a lot of people.

That’s why I went into tech. I wanted to work on accessibility. I quickly realized that a lot of people don’t care about accessibility. No matter how many good people there are trying to make change from the bottom, it’s really hard to get anything done unless you have leadership buy-in from the top. And so I quickly realized that, if I actually want to make any meaningful change, I have to climb into the belly of the beast, climb that corporate ladder, and try to get to the top so that when I’m in a decision-making place, I can have influence and teach other executives or people with decision power that these are areas that we should be focusing on.

So that’s my mission.

Peter Sykes (MBA ’26) is originally from Calgary, Canada. He graduated from Georgetown University in 2015 with a degree in Economics. Prior to HBS, Peter worked in strategic ops at Reservoir Media, an independent music company in New York, and for Morgan Stanley.