🌱 The Girl Next Door Changing the World, One Bioplastic at a Time 🌍

Hi! I am Hannah Harper Zhang, your friendly bioplastics engineer who has a head full of dreams and a lab coat that is covered in coffee stains. ☕️✨

My story lacks glamor. It is raw, real, and so relatable. I initially was the quiet girl in the back of the lab, clenching my pen and notebook for dear life, too petrified to speak up in meetings. As a recent graduate, I was another uninspired overqualified intern trying to gain a place at the table in a male-dominated industry, but here's the kicker: I wouldn't be invisible.

Today I am spearheading innovative projects in sustainable bioplastics (yeah, I know), sometimes finding a way to make packaging from algae, or fashion from food waste. 💃♻️ But the journey? Oh honey, it was anything but easy. I cried in supply closets, burnt my prototypes (sorry about that), and heard countless "You're too young to know what you're doing", but every setback only fueled me. Every time I heard "no", I said, "watch me."

When I'm not obsessing over polymer science, you can find me baking sourdough (yes, I am that girl), hiking with my rescue pup 🐕, or singing badly on karaoke night after a long day of the rat race. I am not a typical "corporate robot"—I am the embodiment of the girl next door, who is only trying to rewrite the future of sustainability one messy, beautiful project at a time.

So, are you in? Let's make our planet greener- and have way too much fun while doing it. 🌿💋