Wei Li is the head of Zoom Events & Webinar. She's based in San Francisco.
How she got her start: "I have always been a video enthusiast and technologist," Li explains. "Previously, I had focused on use cases where video was used as collaboration tools at work and communication appliances in family rooms to bring colleagues and families closer together." The COVID pandemic, though, exposed her to ways that average, non-tech-oriented people were using video creatively in ways she had never imagined.
"I watched my Zumba instructor move her business from her studio to online overnight when the pandemic hit," she remembers. "When we used virtual backgrounds in her classes, both her students and she were blown away by how each class had taken them to all the gorgeous natural wonders that they were not able to. Her class size grew 10 times."
Then, Li was approached to help move an in-person fundraising event to Zoom webinar. "They stitched a few other apps with Zoom Webinar to achieve the function, and convinced me to add a donate button using a Zoom App. The convenience of attending drew many more attendees than pre-pandemic and helped them achieve their fundraising goal much faster," she says. "I witnessed how one of the universities stitched a few tools together and hosted their campus recruiting events over Zoom meetings and webinars."
Li was excited to see companies and brands using Zoom in such innovative and unexpected ways—and knew that the company was in the best possible position to optimize the online event experience for even more users. "I proposed to our CEO, Eric [Yuan], and the rest of the executive staff to embark on the virtual event effort. It was immediately approved and supported," she says. "That was when I shifted my focus from building a developer video platform to Zoom Events."
What innovation means to her: "Innovation means bringing convenience and experiences to users with ease of use or practice, with technologies or processes. It solves users' real problems," Li says. "Staying innovative and forward-thinking is important in my career and my products, because it keeps me and my team not satisfied with the status quo and keeps us focused on solving users’ real problems and keeping them happy. It enables us to look beyond what we’ve already achieved and to always find a way to improve ourselves and our products."
Career highlights: Li cites Zoomtopia 2021, which was hosted on the then-new Zoom Events platform and drew more than 30,000 global attendees for 13 concurrent sessions, as a huge career success. "In May of 2021, our CEO, Eric Yuan, announced that Zoomtopia would be fully virtual and hosted on Zoom Events—and four months later it was," she recalls. "My team and I were thrilled to be able to build and deliver a new product in that timeframe."
Vision for the future: "Looking ahead, I believe virtual events will continue to complement in-person events, allowing additional attendance options and convenience that will greatly improve the reach and impact of any event," Li predicts. "Attendees and other event constituents will absolutely expect the option of attending an event anywhere, on any device, and even anytime they want—and that attending events virtually offers a better experience in some aspects."
Back to the full list: 12 Event Tech Experts Pushing the Industry Forward
