h a r r y l i n

do not mistake composure for ease

 

Harry Lin Home Page

About Harry Lin

harrylinla@gmail.com

I was born in Oklahoma USA to Taiwanese immigrant parents. I spent my childhood and adolescence in suburban Chicago, competing in speech tournaments and listening to rock radio stations. I attended Cornell University, graduating with a bachelor's in communication and minors in women's studies and social psychology. While at Cornell, I worked at WVBR-FM.

I have a master's in journalism from the University of Wisconsin at Madison. At Madison, I wrote for The Isthmus newspaper.

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previous appearances by Harry Lin:

[in-person in Atlanta] ONA convention - speaker. October 2013

[in-person in Anaheim] EIJ conference - speaker. August 2013

[in-person in Orlando] NABJ convention - speaker.  August 2013

[in-person in Los Angeles] V3Con conference - speaker.  June 2013

[in-person in Las Vegas] UNITY conference - speaker.  August 2012

[on television] Nightly Business Report commentaries on PBS news program.

[on YouTube]  City of Ventura - Google fiber competition

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Between 1990-1996, I was a reporter and anchor at KQED-FM, an NPR station in San Francisco. I've also done voiceover work and some television.

My fascination with "new media" and the excitement in Silicon Valley drove me to a career in the Internet.

In 1996, I joined Channel A, a web start-up in Silicon Valley. We had a great idea and ran out of money.  

In 1998, I joined Infoseek, a search engine (one of our engineers is the founder and CEO of Baidu). Infoseek was exhilirating and exhausting.

In 1999, The Walt Disney Company acquired Infoseek and also Starwave, a startup in Seattle. Disney combined Infoseek and Starwave and re-branded infoseek to Go.com. Resignations and re-orgs followed. Hilarity did not ensue.

I was Vice President of Entertainment at The Walt Disney Internet Group, managing teams at MrShowbiz.com, Movies.com, and WallofSound.com, operated out of the company's Seattle offices. 

In 2001 I became Vice President of ABC.com in Burbank, California. So I left broadcast media for the Internet ... and ended up coming back to broadcast media.

Near the end of 2007 I returned to startups. I became the Entrepreneur-in-Residence at Brighthouse, an incubator in California.  We spent 2008 attempting to raise venture capital financing. I worked at several startups, including as CEO. I also took another EIR role at fabled tech incubator Idealab in Pasadena.  

I returned to big companies in October 2013 when I became the Head of Business Development for IMDb. In 2021, I transferred to Amazon Web Services and then later to Amazon Advertising. I left Amazon after a nearly 12-year career there in 2025.

During the pandemic, I relocated to Vancouver, BC, Canada, where I live now.

To keep track of me professionally, see my LinkedIn page.

When I'm not working, I love watching movies, listening to music, and talking with friends (in person, over food preferably). I'm an avid bicyclist.

Prince, Florence + The Machine, Taken By Cars, Wolf Alice, London Grammar, Tori Amos, Sarah McLachlan, Rihanna, Pink Floyd, Bjork. Ridley Scott, Wong Kar-Wai, John Woo, Michael Mann, Kathryn Bigelow. The best James Bond is Daniel Craig, the best Starfleet captain is Janeway, the best Spider-Man is Miles Morales, and the best Starbuck is Katee Sackhoff.


My Micro Movie Reviews

Watch TV!

Michael Mann, Moulin Rouge, Charlie's Angels

Koreatown eats

Toyota and hybrids

Eating in Hawaii

Driving in LA