In another life, Sylvia Kang might have been on the world’s great stages—her fingers commanding the piano with the same precision and passion that now define her scientific work.
But her path took a striking turn: from practicing scales as a concert pianist, to reinventing how we use technology to track our health with Mira.
Sylvia’s journey to becoming Mira’s CEO and co-founder isn’t just about career shifts—it’s about vision.
Where others saw limits, she saw bridges: between art and science, intuition and innovation, human experience and technological possibility.
That perspective ultimately gave rise to a company built on curiosity, discipline, and fearless imagination.
Defying tradition
Sylvia’s career as a concert pianist was set, but her heart was elsewhere. At 18, studying in a conservatory in China, she began teaching herself physics with her grandfather’s old books.
He encouraged her to pursue science—an unconventional path for a young woman in China at the time. Relentless and inquisitive, Sylvia refused to let tradition define her.
"During the night, I’d sneak into my grandfather’s study and flip through his old physics books. I didn’t understand every formula, but I understood what I was feeling: a sense of curiosity, excitement… possibility."
The moment she had the chance, she moved to the United States to follow in her grandfather’s footsteps and earn her degree in bioengineering.
"I came here with two suitcases, broken English, and a stubborn belief that I would become a scientist."
Seeing what others overlooked
From early in her career, Sylvia’s vision was clear: every woman deserves the agency and support to pursue their dreams. That conviction led her to identify critical unmet needs in the women’s health industry.
Although 2015 was the dawn of the digital health tracking era, she saw friends in their early 30s struggling with infertility—forced to rely on outdated ovulation sticks or calendar guesswork, while humanity made amazing technological advancements elsewhere.
"That’s when I found a new purpose, not just to be a scientist, but to build something that mattered for women, something they deserved."
She had her own dreams of motherhood, and was faced with the stark reality—women’s health was far behind the curve, denying them the freedom to make informed choices about their fertility.
Fighting for women
The challenges were undeniable. Women’s health was (and still is) an underserved market, riddled with research gaps and systemic neglect — only 1% of healthcare research funds go to female-specific conditions beyond oncology.
Male infertility had long been the focus, while women were left without the tools to decode their own health, symptoms, and underlying causes of their struggles to conceive.
Sylvia wanted to invent the product that women deserved to have. The product that would help her conceive in the future and help countless other women reach their fertility goals with data on their side.
"Mira started at my kitchen table.
At the time, I was juggling two identities: an entrepreneur trying to build something that had never been done before, and a woman in her mid-30s trying to become a mother.
The nights were long… spreadsheets, prototypes, and hormone charts scattered across the table. I was chasing an idea I believed the world needed, while wondering if it might be the very thing that could help me, too."
The road was steep. Companies founded solely by women receive less than 3% of all venture capital investments.
But Sylvia’s determination never wavered. After chasing data her entire life, she wasn’t going to stop until she had given women and people with ovaries back control and confidence over life’s most important decisions.
Rewriting the rules
In 2016, Sylvia co-founded Mira, inventing the World’s Mini Hormone Lab, the Mira Hormone Monitor. A revolutionary, AI-powered device to track key reproductive hormones and help women reclaim control of their health, and life goals, at last.
Sylvia’s creation was light years ahead—integrating AI into its core technology in 2018, well before machine learning became the healthcare trend.
She even used Mira herself to reclaim her own path to motherhood, helping her find hormone patterns and get pregnant after 35.
Today—with over 200,000 users worldwide—Mira is reshaping how women live. And now, following the launch of Ultra4, Mira’s most advanced technology yet, Sylvia’s dream has made it to Times Square.
Her vision has been brought to life in the form of new and developing technologies for women, proving every day that better data leads to better decisions.
Leading a global health revolution
As an Asian woman founder, Sylvia is reshaping reproductive and hormone health on a global scale.
Her mission now extends beyond technology. She hopes to inspire a new generation of female leaders in reproductive health, fueling the growth of femtech and building the tools that will transform women’s lives for decades to come.
Sylvia leads Mira with the same artistry she brought to music—balancing rigor with creativity, and clarity with bold vision.
Her journey defies convention, but her passion is clear: to continue building technology that empowers people not just to track their health, but to live differently.
Mira is proof that data can unlock agency, that science can create equity, and that persistence can transform lives.
Her story is a reminder to every girl with an unlikely dream: boundaries are only beginnings.
🎧 Listen to the podcast episode to hear how Sylvia turned doubt into discovery.
