YING LIU PROFILE

Organization: Blue Lake Packaging

Position: Founder and CEO

Age: 50

Birthplace: Beijing

Residence: Los Altos Hills

Education: MBA, Michigan State University; bachelor of engineering in operations and international business

to see it get to a level that’s probably settled. But there’s also inflation — it probably costs a lot more to ship it than make it.

QIn the process of spreading awareness of environmental issues, does your marketing ever take on the tone of political advocacy? Do the two go hand in hand?

AI’m very actively involved in the community: I was the PTA chair for my children’s school during the pandemic, I was on the board of our local theater, a library commissioner, a committee member for parks and recreation in our area, and on the Boys and Girls Club for Silicon Valley.

I felt very lucky that I joined Apple at the right time and was relatively financially independent, so I wanted to give back and have genuine curiosity for how things are done in the public and private sectors.

I also wanted to understand how decisions are made in public policy, and how things affect ordinary people’s lives, and how we can possibly make an influence one way or another.

But back to your question about whether my campaign is tied to any political narrative — the short answer is no, because the mission we’re trying to accomplish here at Blue Lake is part of a step forward in helping people understand the downside of using too much plastic in our lives. We just want to give people an alternative.

I don’t think I necessarily need to tie that to any political campaign in order to make this more visible. There may be different agendas (in politics), and for us at Blue Lake our only agenda is to avoid plastic as much as we can.