Hyphen Nation with Dave Lu

About Hyphen Nation with Dave Lu

Dave Lu, Silicon Valley tech veteran, startup founder, investor, activist, and Emmy Award-winning producer, talks to influential leaders in the Asian American community and beyond. His intimate conversations will dive into their journeys and explore how they got to where they are today, including all of the challenges and triumphs. The hope is that these episodes will be a form of mentorship and inspire others to write their own stories.

Publisher

Dave Lu

Category

business

Language

en

Explicit

No

First episode

27 May 2025

Latest episode

1 Sept 2026

Latest episodes

25 episodes in the feed.

1. 

   1 Sept 2026

   Melody Lee - CMO of Mercedes-Benz USA

   What does it take to lead marketing for one of the most iconic luxury brands in the world? In this episode of Hyphen Nation, Dave sits down with Melody Lee, Chief Marketing Officer of Mercedes-Benz USA, to explore her unconventional journey from a $12-an-hour public relations internship to the C-suite. Melody shares how she built her career across public relations, automotive, beauty, design, and luxury—learning to embrace reinvention rather than follow a predetermined path. She discusses the responsibility of stewarding a 140-year-old brand, how Mercedes-Benz is evolving for a new generation of consumers, and why great marketing must drive the growth of the entire business, not simply generate attention. They also talk about navigating corporate America as an Asian American woman, developing the confidence to claim your seat at the table, leading without pretending to have every answer, and the mentors, sponsors, and teams behind every successful career. This is a conversation about ambition, identity, resilience, and the courage to take the opportunities you may not initially feel ready for.

2. 

   30 Jul 2026

   William Wang - From Plane Crash to IPO

   On October 31, 2000, William Wang was one of the last passengers to board Singapore Airlines Flight 6 in Taipei — flying out that night instead of the next morning so he could get home in time for his daughter’s first Halloween. The plane took off on the wrong runway, hit construction equipment at 165 miles per hour, and split apart. Eighty-three people died. William was sitting in the front row of business class, right behind the restroom. He doesn’t remember the last few seconds — only that he was pushed out through a gap in the fuselage by fire and smoke, landed on his feet, and ran. That night could have been the end of the story. Instead it was the middle of it. Decades before the crash, thirteen-year-old William had landed in Honolulu with a green card pressed into his hand before he’d even cleared customs, then spent high school as one of the only Asian kids in a nearly all-white Huntington Beach, eating lunch alone in the cafeteria. He’d go on to call himself “a loser” for barely graduating USC and failing to get into grad school with his friends — before working his way up to director of sales at 25, only to walk away and start over on his own. This is a story about resilience and perseverance. In this episode of Hyphen Nation, Dave talks with William about all of it: the crash and the debt collector waiting for him back home who forgave the timeline out of guilt, the two thousand plasma TVs he talked Costco into betting on that sold out in a week and helped found VIZIO, the near-collapse when a $2 billion acquisition fell through in 2015, the 2021 IPO that peaked at a $5.2 billion market cap, the 2024 sale to Walmart for $2.3 billion, and the belief he had to unlearn along the way — that the company was still his — in order to let it grow past him. It’s a conversation about survival, relationship building, and what it actually costs to build something that outlives your ego.

3. 

   21 Jul 2026

   Yul Kwon - Overcoming Your Fears

   In 2006, Yul Kwon (https://www.linkedin.com/in/yul-kwon-2137/) became the first Asian American to win Survivor — a cultural milestone that made him one of the earliest, most visible Asian American men on national television. But behind the strategic gameplay and the "sexiest man alive" headlines was a much more complicated story. In this episode of Hyphen Nation, Dave Lu sits down with his longtime friend Yul Kwon — Survivor: Cook Islands champion, former FBI advisor, ex-McKinsey consultant, and now a VP at Google — for a conversation that goes far beyond the show. Yul opens up for the first time in detail about growing up in Concord, California, as the child of Korean immigrants: a childhood marked by racist bullying, undiagnosed OCD, severe social anxiety, and a private, deeply shameful condition called paruresis (shy bladder syndrome) that shaped nearly every decision he made — including almost keeping him off Survivor altogether. Yul traces the full arc of his life: a bullying incident in elementary school that triggered decades of hidden struggle, the loss of his best friend Evan to leukemia at Stanford (and the bone marrow donor registry campaign it sparked), his pivot from law and public policy to McKinsey and Google, his winding path to Survivor, and the personal reckoning that came with sudden fame. He also shares the "competence, integrity, benevolence" trust framework he now uses to build relationships at work and at home, and reflects candidly on why so many Asian Americans are trusted to work hard but not trusted to lead — and what it takes to break that pattern. This is a conversation about identity, mental health, and the difference between being liked and being trusted — from someone who spent years hiding his story before deciding to use his platform to tell it. Topics covered: Growing up in Concord, CA as a child of Korean immigrants Undiagnosed OCD, social anxiety, and paruresis (shy bladder syndrome) A childhood bullying incident and its decades-long psychological impact Losing his best friend Evan to leukemia at Stanford, and organizing bone marrow drives for the Asian American community The path from Stanford → Yale Law → Capitol Hill (Sen. Joe Lieberman) → McKinsey → Google Nearly turning down Survivor because of his hidden condition Becoming the first Asian American to win Survivor, and the disorientation of sudden fame Being named one of People's "Sexiest Men Alive" and navigating stereotype-breaking visibility The "competence, integrity, benevolence" framework for building trust Why Asian Americans are often trusted to be hard workers but not trusted to lead

Who has been a guest on Hyphen Nation with Dave Lu

Names identified in recent episode analyses. Showing up to five guests.

• Jenny Ming
• Kenneth Lin
• Deb Liu

Reach and audience

Public platform figures. Ratings count people who left a rating, not total listeners.

Apple Podcasts (US)

4.7 / 5

11 ratings

Spotify

4.7 / 5

7 ratings

Podcast Authority Score: 34 / 100

A composite of feed quality, social presence, YouTube performance and engagement. Read the methodology.

Quality

55

Social presence

0

YouTube

0

Engagement

31

Contact Hyphen Nation with Dave Lu

Guest appearances

Books guests

Based on episode analysis; this does not confirm that the show is currently accepting guests.

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