About me

Hi! I'm Lily Truong.

Present day

I'm a medtech entrepreneur currently based in SF. In 2011, I co-founded Clear Ear, a medical device company offering a FDA listed product line for ear wax management. I took the company from napkin concept to large scale production to commercialization in the U.S. & Asia, and am still serving as its CEO today.

Past influences and experiences

My parents fled Vietnam as refugees and arrived in the U.S. to pursue the American dream. They decided to build their life in Orange County, CA, where I was born and I grew up. The 18 years in SoCal shaped me into someone who enjoys the moment, remains calm during stressful times, and obsesses over beaches, sunshine, and ethnic food. 

My SoCal upbringing also changed the course of my professional life. My last summer living there, I was an R&D intern at Alcon, a medical device company developing cataract eye surgery systems. There I discovered the scale of impact that inventors and engineers could have and was hooked. I worked on eye surgery machines that cured millions of people of blindness due to cataracts each year. That singular experience inspired me to move up to NorCal and go to Stanford University, where I spent the next 5 years deep diving into engineering and biology and global health. During my pivotal years at Stanford, I spent 9 months in Germany, immersing in engineering courses at Technishe Universitat in Berlin and helping a German medical device start-up in Erlangen get FDA approval for their Lasik eye surgery systems. Afterwards, I did a stint in Hangzhou, China at a Chinese start-up called Focused Photonics, developing food safety devices. Eventually I moved back to the Bay Area to drive manufacturing excellence at Genentech for cancer vaccines. Throughout these experiences I  picked up a few foreign languages (German & Chinese) and earned 2 degrees (B.S. in Biomechanical Engineering and M.S. in Mechanical Engineering), but more importantly, I developed an immense passion for Biodesign as a framework for inventing and building medical devices to help people around the world live healthier and happier lives. From my travels through 30 countries around the world (and counting!), I’ve found that regardless of where people live, there is universal desire for health and happiness – both for themselves as well as for their loved ones. Without health and happiness, it's harder to enjoy all that life has to offer.

The most heartbreaking moments are those when you or a loved one loses his / her health. In a matter of seconds, something that you once took for granted suddenly ceases to exist. I personally experienced this when my mom had sudden hearing loss and went completely deaf in one ear. One night she was completely fine, and the next morning she faced a completely new reality that she and our family had to adapt to. All of us have encountered a similar experience of this nature.  The rigorous and proven Biodesign process I was trained in at Stanford equipped me with skillsets to bring health innovations to life so that instead of feeling powerless in the face of these moments, I found a sense of purpose and felt empowered to solve these unmet health needs that exist everyday at every stage of life. 

Future outlook and motivations

What never ceases to surprise me, is in the face of life's up and downs, humans are very adaptable creatures, especially if given the right tools and mindset. Though we may be used to living life a certain way now, there are ample opportunities to make things a little bit easier, make people a little bit happier and comfortable in the moment, empower people a little bit more, or to keep people in better health a little longer – that's the needle I want to spend my life trying to move.

At my core, I am:

A maker and builder.

A biodesign enthusiast.

A teacher.

A lifelong student.

And a global citizen.

I strive to maximize human impact, driving impact through touching the most number of human lives in a positive way through my projects. I look for projects that give me an opportunity to integrate inventiveness, community, learning, & teaching.

The 4 sections of my website reflect how my core motivation of human impact has taken its different forms.

• Firstly, by making things that people either emotionally connect to or help people lead healthier and happier lives through my design & manufacturing projects
• Secondly, by teaching students the process of healthcare innovation and empowering them to go out and create their own impact for the world through co-teaching our Biodesign hackathons
•  Thirdly, by sharing my insights and pitfalls with fellow innovators or aspiring innovators about the journey of inventing and bringing ideas to market at the intersection of health, tech, design, and manufacturing through my speaking engagements
• Lastly, by engaging in community projects where I have an opportunity to establish a one-to-one connection between me and the other members of the community I'm serving.

Ultimately, this is my personal way of making an impact and my goal is to inspire you to go out to DO that weekend side project or start-up project or that volunteer gig for that community org you’ve been thinking about all this time but haven't gotten around to. Make an impact using the skills that make you unique and share it with the world, whether that's writing, building, drawing, storytelling, design, mentoring, or something completely different. Just be out there trying to touch humans lives in a positive way each day in the best way you know how, no matter how small the impact. If we all did that, together it'll go a long way.

I’d love to hear from you! Feel free to reach out by using the “contact me” link below if I can help in any way :)