**Michelle Lai** grew up in Asia, where she developed a strong desire for people to live freely. She believes privacy is one of the most critical ingredients for free societies. As a technophile, she believes technology is a primary tool with which people can achieve privacy and freedom. She was on the inaugural Zcash grant committee (the "ZOMG"), which receives and distributes the lion's share of non-miner block rewards to projects building on top of Zcash, as well as to projects with a strong privacy purpose (e.g. Tor's Rust implementation). In this capacity she authored the ZOMG's whitepaper, describing their grant strategy and vision (zcashomg.org/whitepaper.html).