She’s one of the most powerful women in the world, thanks to her marriage to Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg. But Priscilla Chan isn’t just defined by who she’s wed to, she’s a gamechanger in her own right. While we don’t know that much about the Harvard-educated doctor, we do know she must have one exliharating personality to have captured the heart of a billionaire chief executive. Here, we reveal 10 things you may not have known about Facebook’s first lady:
The couple met as Harvard classmates at a party thrown by friends. “I thought he was just this really interesting guy, who really wasn’t that studious,” she said. They dated for nearly a decade before adding their May 2012 wedding as a “life event” to each other’s timelines.
“I did have that honor,” she said, although she acknowledges that her peers were extremely bright as well. In an interview with NBC, Priscilla says she’s still surrounded by a lot of smart people but the surroundings have changed: “I’m just a little fish in a big pond.”
“I would say I’m probably a prototypical eldest child. I bossed my middle sister around all the time.” She also acted as a translator for her grandparents who couldn’t speak a word of English when they first emigrated from their home country to the US.
Priscilla says she has no problem with the trademark item of clothing her husband wears every day. “I’m happy with whatever he wants to wear, as long as it’s appropriate for where we’re going. So he can’t wear a hoodie to weddings. And he can’t wear it to baby showers. But he can do whatever else he wants,” she told the media.
Priscilla is a medical school graduate who specialises in pediatrics. She was also the first in her family to finish college. “Education is an incredibly personal issue for me,” she shares, “it was really my teachers that got me these opportunities to attend college, to go to medical school, and to be able to give back as a doctor today.”
Priscilla can speak English, Spanish, and Cantonese. She learned Spanish after realising that so many of her patients spoke the language: “You can be a better provider and really connect better with individuals if you can speak their language, and so I started studying Spanish in college, and get lots of practice in my work.”
Priscilla and her husband made waves this week when they announced their investment of US$3 billion to prevent, cure and manage all diseases within their daughter’s lifetime. The couple welcomed their first child, daughter Maxima Chan Zuckerberg, in December 2015.
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Priscilla says the road to motherhood was not an easy one: “There are really dark moments where you think you’re alone,” she said. “We realized that we weren’t and that there were other people traveling along the same road with you. I think having that, knowing that you’re not alone, was incredibly important for us.”
The couple’s dog has a cult following on Facebook and though Beast has made a lot of friends on social media, the heiress of Facebook will have to wait until she’s age-appropriate. “Max will have her own Facebook page, but she’ll need to wait until she’s 13,” says Priscilla.
“I think it’s a shame when people don’t see the funny, thoughtful Mark that I know,” she said. “He is incredibly sensitive and really cares about what other people need and want and really wants to be able to make someone else’s day. And that’s the Mark that I see.”