Bend, Not Break

Bend, Not Break chronicles Ping Fus journey from Chinas work camps to top CEO.

Bamboo is flexible, bending with the wind but never breaking. It suggests resilience, meaning that we have the ability to bounce back even from the most difficult times -Ping Fus Shanghai papa

Ping Fu is one of the few women running a tech company in the US. But her story begins long before.

Born on the eve of Chinas Cultural Revolution, she was separated from her family at the age of eight. She grew up fighting hunger and humiliation and shielding her younger sister from the vindictive teenagers of Maos Red Guard. At twenty-five she escaped to the United States; her only resources were $80 in travellers checks and three phrases of English: Thank you, hello, and help.

Yet Ping persevered. Within a year she had completed her English qualifications and started studying computer programming, rising to run the team behind Netscape. She then founded Geomagic, a company that has literally reshaped the world, from personalizing prosthetic limbs to repairing NASA spaceships.

Bend, Not Break tells the incredible personal story of a journey from imprisonment to freedom, from Maos China to technology start-ups. It is a tribute to one womans courage in the face of cruelty, and a valuable lesson on the enduring power of resilience.

Ping Fu is President and CEO of Geomagic, Inc. A survivor of Chinas Cultural Revolution, she was imprisoned for her reporting on female infanticide under Chinas one-child policy and deported to the USA. Fu is one of the few women CEOs in technology and was named the 2005 "Entrepreneur of the Year" by Inc. Magazine. She is a member of President Obamas National Council on Innovation and Entrepreneurship and an adjunct professor in computer science at Duke University.