Cindy was a creative powerhouse. She packed an incredible amount of time, love and selflessness into everything she created and many of us witnessed this happen in our days working on design teams at CC1-AOL. You could tell just by looking in her pod that she was a delicious explosion of mayhem. You always wanted to see what she would build, design, sew up, cook up, and eventually shake up with her small, but talented 5 foot frame.

Owais and I worked with Cindy back in the naughts at AOL. Cindy Li was one of the most delightful human beings we were able to call a friend. Cindy was our resident photographer at our AOL holiday parties (taking reindeer pix with a light-up red nose), and our resident CosPlayer - with the most amazing Queen Amidala outfit I’ve ever seen outside of Hollywood. Cindy was a connector of worlds.

I don’t remember how Cindy and I became friends. I never worked on any projects with Cindy during my times at AOL from 2002 to 2007. Cindy was at AOL from 1998 to 2007 in our Dulles, Virginia headquarter. She just seemed to pop into my cubicle one day with her dazzling smile out on a visit to our West Coast office. We just connected. As a professional, Cindy is such a talented person.

I am realizing how few photos I took of Cindy - I think because she was always the one with the camera (and always a better camera than what I had!) I’ve been looking through her flickr feed and realizing how much I love these photos of the two of us. Cindy’s wearing a crown of course, (that might be blurry Matt in the background?) and I’m super pregnant. I think these were on her tour of saying goodbye to the DMV area.

So, I’m going to share how I met Cindy. Cindy was at AOL with my brother, Philip Kim. He often talked about his “kooky” friend and how talented she was a designer, which says a lot. He rarely spoke of others in such warm and glowing terms. In 2006, we found out that my brother had MDS, which bloomed into leukemia. He was treated at the NIH because the only way to save him was to do a stem cell transplant and….

I first met Cindy when we were both young and in our 20’s. We both lived in Northern VA, and we both worked for AOL. Cindy was the cool girl who roller skated down corridors of AOL in her sneaker-skates (Heelys?). I loved that when I was a newbie at the company, Cindy was quick to include me in her circle of friends. When I started hanging out with Cindy, one thing about her stood out.

One of my favorite memories is meeting her and thinking oh man if I had 1⁄10 of her energy I could be sooooo much better!!! She is Holly 2.0!!! 😛 My aspiring next version. When I met Cindy in her cube, I knew I had found my East coast tribe! I always had a friend when I went to Dulles who would always take me in no matter how old of a version of Holly I was 😉

My adventures with Cindy Li began in the hills of northern Virginia back in a time when dinosaurs ruled the earth. Yes, I’m talking about AOL. I was blessed to be assigned to a team with this perky, friendly, optimistic, and incredibly talented woman of the name Cindy Li. Our first adventure was launching a new homepage to millions of adoring fans (and equal number of complaints about moving the mail icon!

Like Sarah, I don’t really remember how I met Cindy. She just kind of appeared one day at AOL and I got sucked into the Cindy Li Vortex of Fun Adventures. My favorite Cindy story of all-time was how the “Geeks Love *” shirt happened. Cindy, Jason and I were at lunch and I were at lunch one day after I’d spent all morning interviewing developers for a contract position. I’d quizzed them all about web standards and they’d all failed to some degree, except one smug guy who said, “Yeah, we’re really anal about standards, because, you know, geeks love anal.

One of my favorite moments was actually before we actually officially met! AOL HQ, 2000-2001ish. Going down the looooooooooong hallway, a person glided/levitated past me. Smile, ear to ear. I look 👀 ed down at your sneakers Cindy, still baffled. With the wink of an eye and a flip of your shoe, you revealed your heely’s :D Magic! It was Love at first sight