I was born in the small coastal town of Calatagan, Batangas, in the Philippines. While my early environment offered limited material advantages, it provided a rigorous foundation through education—an area where I consistently thrived and excelled.
I didn’t own a computer until my fourth year at university, when my thesis made one an absolute requirement. Before that, I wrote code in my head or on scraps of paper, testing it in local internet cafes whenever I could scrape together enough money to pay for the screen time. Books were a luxury, so I read them wherever they lived. As a child, I helped clean our public school library just for the privilege of being near them. I vividly remember staring at pictures of distant countries, fueled by a quiet but fierce belief that, somehow, I would see them all someday.
Straight out of university, I joined the world’s biggest chipmaker as a Systems Industrial Engineer. It was an excellent job, and it shaped me far beyond the technical skills. In an industry where a flaw too small to see can scrap an entire batch, I learned to respect process: map every step, measure what matters, and find the root cause instead of treating the symptom. I learned that innovation is rarely a flash of genius. It is disciplined, continuous improvement, built by teams that question everything and write down what works. That way of thinking—break the problem down, test, refine, then scale—became the lens I still bring to every system I touch.
But I wanted to see, do, and experience more than a cubicle could ever offer. When an opportunity arose to travel the world while staying in IT, I took the leap.
It was an unusual, uncharted path: from semiconductors to cruise ships. The owner of the cruise line reviewed my work personally, then trusted me to streamline the company’s systems and processes across Norway and the United Kingdom. Along the way, I became one of the first women to serve as an IT Officer at sea.
That first ship was the start of a career in cruise that has now spanned more than two decades. I ran complex technology on board, far from shore, where there’s no room for failure. Later, I led application deployments in shipyards around the world, delivering the technology for multi-million-dollar new builds and refits.
And against all odds, I saw every single place from those childhood library books. Every major port you can name. The Arctic and Antarctica. The deepest stretches of the Amazon. Remote Norwegian fjords and the world’s narrowest canals. Easter Island, hanging on the absolute edge of satellite footprints. I stood before the Pyramids of Giza, walked the ancient stone streets of Jerusalem’s Old City, rode camels in Turkey, watched whales in Alaska, landed on glaciers by helicopter, and completed the life-altering trek to Everest Base Camp.
I had built a career I was proud of and the exact life I had planned. Then, in my thirties—single, constantly living out of a suitcase, with no family of my own nearby—the quiet questions arrived. Was this lifestyle the permanent price of my success?
I decided it was time to come back to land.
An executive offer brought me to Miami as Senior Manager of IT for one of the “Big Three,” the third-largest cruise operator in the world. Coming ashore gave me something I had never had at sea: a routine. Suddenly, I had time for fitness, new sports, and travel purely for pleasure. In Miami I found my footing and my true home, and it’s where I built a life with my amazing husband and our three fur babies.
The work ashore, however, was just as demanding. I helped build and run a staging facility where ship technology was assembled and tested before it ever went to sea, led innovation across the fleet, and grew as a leader in a fast-paced, competitive corporate culture.
In 2019, at 41, I founded Linkfinite. My goal was practical: build a second source of income of my own. A year later, the pandemic stopped the cruise industry overnight and showed how fragile it is to depend on a single paycheck. I was fortunate to keep my job; countless peers were not. I quickly expanded Linkfinite to help colleagues in maritime and hospitality build new skills and get back on their feet.
As I kept climbing the corporate ladder, now as a Director in the Global Technology Organization, Linkfinite quietly grew alongside me. Today it is an agentic AI platform and integration service, offering AI readiness, multi-agent orchestration, risk management, and compliance for healthcare, wellness, and real estate.
Yet even with a thriving side business, I found myself caught in a familiar loop: When can I finally leave my job to focus on my company? When will I be secure enough to walk away from a senior role and be my own boss? Every time those questions came up, I shrugged them off. I have real responsibilities that depend on a steady income.
So instead of quitting, I focused on learning. I earned my certification from MIT in Designing and Building AI Products and Services, and became a certified AI Consultant with the US Institute of Diplomacy and Human Rights (USIDHR). But the deeper my understanding of AI grew, the sharper my questions became. Working at the frontier of technology means constantly wondering: Will my decades of experience still count next year, or will the next AI model make my role obsolete?
At 48, looking back on decades of work I’m proud of, I asked myself the question that mattered most: What’s next for me?
That’s when I realized I didn’t have to make a reckless, binary choice between keeping my job or risking everything on a whim. I didn’t have to stay stuck, but I didn’t have to blindly leap either. I just needed to know my numbers.
“I didn’t have to stay stuck, but I didn’t have to blindly leap either. I just needed to know my numbers.”
The most critical metric is what I call your Freedom Number. This isn’t a vague fantasy of making a million dollars; it is the monthly income required to cover the life you actually live, including the health coverage and business costs your employer covers today, and the taxes you’ll owe on your own. Once you calculate that exact number, “I should do something” transforms into a tangible target, a clear timeline, and an actionable plan.
This is the philosophy of the Soft Shift. It isn’t a get-rich-quick scheme. It is the discipline of quietly building your personal runway to freedom with the right mindset and tools, all while fiercely protecting the assets that carry you: your sleep, your hormones, your mental health, and your longevity.
I built this methodology for the “women in the middle” because I am one.
These are the corporate executives and established founders who have already built something and are deciding what comes next. It is for the leader wondering what part of her work still truly fulfills her; the founder whose business demands more than she has left to give; the expert ready to monetize her deep institutional knowledge; the woman carrying more at home while still carrying her career; the professional between major roles; and the woman retiring from one career with her ambition fully intact.
I don’t come to you as a guru with thousands of students, and I can’t promise you seven figures in a few months.
Today, anyone can build almost anything with AI. The tools change in a heartbeat, and we don’t sell them. The real advantage is knowing how to fit them together into something cost-efficient and built to scale. That is what we study, and it is what we teach, so you can build a platform of your own.
This isn’t another networking group. You’ll learn from industry experts, including people who have built technology inside some of the world’s biggest tech companies, and, when you want hands-on help, builders who sit down with you and help you build your platform. Our platform matches your expertise to the path that fits you, Advisor or Builder. When you’re ready, it equips you to run your own cohort and earn income of your own.
No one in our space will ever ask you to expose your financial figures; your numbers are yours alone to track. But you will no longer have to track them alone. Vaantage Club is a community of women who are each, in their own way, engineering their shift. Every gathering we host is designed so you feel at home among peers who share your drive, your experience, and your goals for what comes next.
I’m sharing this story because I wish someone had told it to me years ago.
You don’t have to jump off the corporate ledge blindly. You can transition softly, safely, and powerfully.
Join me in the Soft Shift. Welcome to Vaantage.
With you, Lui