May Lee’s parents immigrated from Taiwan in the 1960s. Her father, Lin-Fa Lee, found work as a chemical engineer at DuPont’s nylon plant in Chattanooga. Near the end of her mother’s pregnancy with Lee, her parents visited Niagara Falls on a belated honeymoon. As it happened, May was impatient to greet the world, moved up the production schedule, and ended up being born in Toronto, Canada.
In her thirty-year career in Silicon Valley and her other interests, Lee has always brought a special brand of joie de vivre, which she has branded with a color. In late elementary school, she says, “I didn’t like pink. I didn’t like blue. I loved the color purple. I started wearing it every day, and I have for 40 years.” She drives a Midnight Purple Acura NSX sportscar with the license plate MS PURPL. She spells out her mantra on her LinkedIn profile:
P assionate about life & the things that matter
U nrelenting detail-oriented focus
R esults-oriented with a commitment to customer satisfaction
P ersistent pursuit of excellence
L eader with integrity & compassion
E nergetic & positive attitude to overcome anything.
P assionate about life & the things that matter
U nrelenting detail-oriented focus
R esults-oriented with a commitment to customer satisfaction
P ersistent pursuit of excellence
L eader with integrity & compassion
E nergetic & positive attitude to overcome anything.
Lee is passionate about travel: she capped her 50th year with a visit to her seventh continent, Antarctica. She is passionate about food: she has earned 100 Michelin stars for visiting the top-ranked restaurants in the world. Her favorite is Azurmendi in the Basque country of Spain. She is passionate about theatre: she sees twenty to thirty shows each year in San Francisco and New York (including Hamilton many times in multiple cities). She also helped produce an Asian-American musical Heading East in the Bay Area.
May Lee taking a Polar Plunge in Antarctica
Lee has had other colors in her life, starting with red, blue, and white. She went to Red Bank High School in Chattanooga, where she discovered her first love, journalism, co-editing the school paper, The Blue and White.
Then Lee met orange. She came to UT intending to transfer to Georgia Tech to be with her high school boyfriend. But she ended up loving UT so much she stayed, very much keeping to her habit of going for the gusto.
Feeling pressure from home to be an engineer, doctor, or lawyer, Lee majored in computer science major with a math minor. At the same time, she took Spanish, enjoyed it, and added Latin American studies as a concentration. She wrote for the Daily Beacon, served in student government, played soccer, rooted for the Lady Vols, saw plays at the Clarence Brown Theatre, and was a Torchbearer nominee.
The summer before her senior year at UT, Lee interned at Hewlett-Packard as a software engineer, which led to a job after graduation and the start of a remarkable HP career.
“I’ve always thought that I got a good, solid education that prepared me for the competition in the workplace,” says Lee. “The competitive energy comes from me, but having been a UT graduate enabled me to face the world knowing that I was well equipped.”
Since 2010, Lee has been a Marketing Communications manager for HP Inc. through the Marisan Group. She had held similar positions with HP and the spinoff Agilent Technologies for nine years, following two years product managing HP PCs sold in Walmarts and Latin American retailers and two years before that managing the highly successful launch of HP’s VerSecure encryption technology.
Then Lee met orange. She came to UT intending to transfer to Georgia Tech to be with her high school boyfriend. But she ended up loving UT so much she stayed, very much keeping to her habit of going for the gusto.
Feeling pressure from home to be an engineer, doctor, or lawyer, Lee majored in computer science major with a math minor. At the same time, she took Spanish, enjoyed it, and added Latin American studies as a concentration. She wrote for the Daily Beacon, served in student government, played soccer, rooted for the Lady Vols, saw plays at the Clarence Brown Theatre, and was a Torchbearer nominee.
The summer before her senior year at UT, Lee interned at Hewlett-Packard as a software engineer, which led to a job after graduation and the start of a remarkable HP career.
“I’ve always thought that I got a good, solid education that prepared me for the competition in the workplace,” says Lee. “The competitive energy comes from me, but having been a UT graduate enabled me to face the world knowing that I was well equipped.”
Since 2010, Lee has been a Marketing Communications manager for HP Inc. through the Marisan Group. She had held similar positions with HP and the spinoff Agilent Technologies for nine years, following two years product managing HP PCs sold in Walmarts and Latin American retailers and two years before that managing the highly successful launch of HP’s VerSecure encryption technology.
Lee has attended or hosted the biennial Lady Vols basketball game against Stanford for the past three decades and returned to Knoxville for Pat Summitt’s public memorial service. She is tireless in her work as president of the Alumni Chapter for the San Francisco Bay Area and has served on UT’s Board of Governors in the past. She was recently presented by Development Director Brian Shupe with an Accomplished Alumni Award.
“I will always be grateful to UT for providing me with an excellent education and strong foundation for my career in Silicon Valley,” she says. “It’s one of the reasons I love staying involved and active with the alumni organization.”
“I will always be grateful to UT for providing me with an excellent education and strong foundation for my career in Silicon Valley,” she says. “It’s one of the reasons I love staying involved and active with the alumni organization.”
May Lee with her best friend and fellow UT graduate Angela Chao and her daughter Peyton at a showing of Hamilton
