Bend, Not Break

As CEO of Geomagic, Ping Fu is one of the few women running a tech company in the US. Her technology has digitised the Statue of Liberty and repaired NASA space shuttles, but her story begins long before.

Ping was eight years old when China's Cultural Revolution began. She was seized from her home and sent to a camp where she suffered unspeakable torment and abuse. When the Cultural Revolution ended Ping managed to earn a degree in literature, but at 24 - after a report she wrote on the killing of baby girls created an international outrage - she was imprisoned and deported to the United States with just $80 and four words of English.

Straight off the plane she was kidnapped by a man who wanted her to watch his children, rescued by police and finally delivered to the University of New Mexico in a squad car. Within a year she had completed her English qualifications and started studying computer programming, rising from low-wage worker to high-profile computer programmer, initiating and managing the famed Mosaic team that led to the development of Netscape and founding Geomagic, Inc.

This is an inspiring tale of triumph against the odds.