Today we’d like to introduce you to Stella Guan.
Hi Stella, thanks for sharing your story with us. To start, maybe you can tell our readers some of your backstory.
I am an immigrant to the United States. I came to the US at age 18 from China on a full scholarship and went through multiple visas before obtaining my permanent residency. When I came to the US, I didn’t like it for the first couple of years but when I discovered the charm of New York City and moved there right after college, this country started to grow on me. I thought I would never leave New York and indeed – I spent almost a decade there. When I turned 30, I realized my chapter with New York may have come to an end as I found myself wanting to move out West. I visited Los Angeles a few times as a tourist. It’s a very different city but I’d say the weather really sold me on it – as cliche as it sounds. I also value diversity and the availability of good food as an immigrant so I’d say my options are limited to either LA or NYC. Since LA beats NYC in weather (for folks who like the sun and lack of humidity), I decided it was time to make the big move.
I majored in broadcast journalism in undergrad because I was so sure that my dream was to become a TV producer. I did become one – for less than six months. That was the amount of time I needed to realize I did not love the industry as much as I thought I would. I felt defeated and wanted out. So I quit and began some soul searching.
I have always loved film and I enrolled in a brief filmmaking program after college. I had a lot of fun there. That’s why I thought maybe I should try film next because it’s so adjacent to TV. I decided to apply for the Cinematography certificate program at UCLA after my brief career in TV. I was about 23 at the time. I had the entire application package prepared, sealed and ready to mail out. But then it rained heavily – it was a torrential downpour. So I had to stay home. Something magical happened during that brief period of time. I somehow had an epiphany – the film school idea did not seem completely right – I couldn’t explain why, but I just knew I had to tear up the application. So I did.
Then I started over again with the soul searching. I realized I had been designing my own resume since my junior year in college – just for fun. I started researching jobs in graphic design and a lot of results showed up. That’s when I had the thought to study design instead. I always tell people that a good future career should have 3 overlaps in characteristics – are you good at it? do you enjoy it? can you make good money with it? I thought I enjoyed designing and I seemed to not suck at it. With the number of jobs I could found on job boards, it seems to be a solid option for a career.
That’s when I found a certificate program at Pratt Institute in New York, which is one of the best design schools. I already decided against a second degree or a graduate program because one, my family had no money to support me and as an international student and we could not work legally on a student visa; second, I knew that in the creative industry, it is all about what you can do rather than a piece of paper that says you graduated. So I thought the best way to make this happen is through a short program.
I’m so glad I went with this route because years later, I would find out that some of my friends who spent an additional 3 years at grad school were not making more than I did.
After I graduated from the program in one year, I found jobs at smaller companies as a junior designer. I worked my way through several industries as a designer and gained a lot of experience. Right around when I turned 28, I felt burned out and lost my purpose. I had been satisfied with moving my way up the corporate ladder doing what I enjoy, but at around that time, I felt unfulfilled. I really wanted to make a lot more money and also have freedom in what I do. The corporate environment isn’t exactly built for that – there is a ceiling for how much you can make. You will never become a multi-millionaire being an employee and you will always have restrictions on what you can do. When I was told to delete articles that I had written online about my own professional experience, I was appalled by the control that companies felt entitled to their employees’ lives and freedom of speech. That’s when I have had it. I started to plan my way out.
As someone who held a work visa sponsored by the company, I had to figure out a way to obtain legal status solely on my own, independent of any company. That’s when I knew I had to shoot for the EB1A green card – the so-called “Einstein Visa”, which the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services called “Permanent Residency for Aliens with Extraordinary Abilities”. It sounded very scary – I’ve always heard that only Olympians and Oscar winners can qualify and I was neither. However, after some more digging, I realize it wasn’t as hard as I thought it would be. I quickly drafted up a strategy and started applying for awards with my work. I studied extensively on how others became qualified and I made every effort to make that happen. And very luckily, I was approved in 2018. But the US was at a time when immigration policies were not very friendly so my case got stuck at processing. The wait was excruciating with no end in sight. So I had to apply for the lower level O1 visa with the same credentials, which would allow me to work and live here legally without being attached to a company while waiting for my green card to come.
In 2020, my green card finally arrived in the mail on a random day, which was a very odd experience since it was in the middle of the pandemic and everybody was in a dark place. I was, too, so I wasn’t overly excited but definitely felt hugely relieved. I was able to start my own company, Path Unbound – an online design school that provides customizable curriculum to students who want to have a career in design and at an affordable price.
The idea of starting an education business didn’t come to me overnight. I knew I wanted to strike out on my own but I wasn’t sure what and how. That’s when I had the idea of starting to speak at conferences to get my name out there. I was lucky enough to get invited to speak at a few conferences and the first one happened in Ottawa, Canada. I was one of the speakers but I was way more impressed by the speech of the keynote speaker, Robert Smith, who is now a friend. He was extremely charismatic, eloquent and very funny. I talked to him afterwards. I asked him how he came to be so good at speaking. He said he taught at universities. I thought – I could try that, too! That’s when I started to reach out to colleges in New York. I was lucky enough to be recommended to a few schools by a professor who believed in me but couldn’t hire me due to my lack of a master’s degree. Soon enough, her other colleagues responded and gave me an opportunity to teach at 2 of the top universities in New York City. At the same time, I also started teaching at several other private vocational schools. While I enjoyed and valued my experience there, I realized a lot of missed opportunities in the design education system and heard a lot of pain points from students. I thought I could do it better and that’s how I started my company.
In the winter of 2020, as I was just getting my company Path Unbound going, I had a strong urge to start another one, which sounded completely crazy. It still is. I realized I really love furniture and I craved to design something more tangible and people can keep for a long time instead of digital stuff which will get erased in a few years. I started to sketch my ideas out and realized that I could collaborate with my father, who is a mechanical engineer, and my mother, who had production experience and could liaise with factories for me. I started my furniture brand, Bezier Home, as a side hustle as I worked on my main entrepreneurial endeavor. It took two years for the production to finally fall into place with multiple challenges in manufacturing and international logistics due to the extreme port congestion at Long Beach and a worldwide supply chain crisis, but this summer, I am finally able to launch my mid-century modern, multi-functional and design-forward furniture brand with affordable price tags compared to traditional designer furniture.
I’m sure you wouldn’t say it’s been obstacle free, but so far would you say the journey have been a fairly smooth road?
I went through so many ups and downs, back and forth and setbacks. Nothing about entrepreneurship is smooth. But I have always been someone who has no Plan B. I even wrote an article about it on Medium.com on how Plan B is not an option for me. Plan A has to work! It isn’t as reckless as it sounds – it basically means that I will not give up on my dreams no matter what and I have to put in all that I have to make that happen.
Thanks – so what else should our readers know about Path Unbound?
Path Unbound is a design school that offers a customized curriculum for students who want to make design a career. We do not believe in one-size-fits-all curriculum – skincare and medicine is not one size fits all, why should education be? We offer visual design courses in 9 different topics that culminate to a high-value and affordable certificate program which includes career coaching and hands-on portfolio building.
Unlike many other schools, we do not use “mentors” to teach students. We only work with highly-qualified instructors who had previous teaching experience and also currently active in their design practice. Our boutique model creates a highly effective education experience for students who want to learn from the best and receive the most amount of individual attention at a fraction of the price.
We also collaborate with recruiting firms as well as startups to provide students with real-world project experience before they graduate.
Is there anything else you’d like to share with our readers?
I’d love to talk a little bit about my second company, Bezier Home. As an interior design enthusiast with taste for high-design furniture, I found myself not being able to afford most high-end designer furniture that meets my taste for design but unwilling to purchase the lower-end furniture because of the lack of design in those items.
As a designer, I was determined to solve this problem. As an urban professional, I also felt the need to have furniture that serves multiple purposes because many of us live in smaller spaces. Most furniture on the market that looks very cool can only do one thing and some of them even do nothing – they are mostly sculptural pieces for display.
My furniture line, Bezier Home, is created to solve all of these problems. The name “Bezier” came from the French. Most graphic designers know of this name because it is the name for the curvature we create with design programs. I love curves in furniture – they are so soothing, beautiful and safer for children. All of my furniture design has beautiful curves and that is why the name feels so right. Of course, once I learned more about production, I realized that any furniture that contains curves is much more expensive and difficult to produce. But because we work hard to source the right manufacturer and we are direct-to-consumer, we are able to sell it for a more affordable price than extremely expensive designer furniture, which is out of reach to most consumers.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.pathunbound.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/stella.guan
- Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/stellaguan
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCXD4AjtWCSuR3tAlq14ugKg
- Other: https://www.bezierhome.com
Image Credits
Illustration Credit: Ellen Weber Photo credits: First photo (with floral print dress) and photo with me sitting down on blue couch: Preeti Kumar Photo credit with house and green in the background: Julia Silva
