Diana Chao is a Buyi Chinese-American immigrant who founded Letters to Strangers (L2S) in high school after bipolar disorder and a blinding eye disease nearly ended her life. Today, Letters to Strangers is the largest global youth-for-youth mental health non-profit, directly impacting over 35,000 people every year.
"I spent most of my life believing that pursuing social impact means sacrifice, and in many ways that is still true. But it is also something that you do not have to shoulder alone, and I chose Oxford and am thrilled to join the Skoll Scholar community precisely because we share the same values - we want to build a better world, and we know that to do so will take every one of us - together."
Diana has been honoured by two U.S. presidents at the White House, the Princess Diana Awards as a 2021 Legacy Award Winner, L'Oréal Paris as a 2020 Women of Worth, Oprah Magazine as its 2019 Health Hero, the We Are Family Foundation as a Global Teen Leader in 2017, the youngest-ever winner of the Unilever Young Entrepreneurs Award, and she gave a TEDxTeen speech at the PlayStation Theater in Times Square.
