The co-creator of Willow Garage, a company that designed robotics and AI systems that were sold to Google, Huynh helped to raise millions of dollars for Barack Obama’s 2012 presidential campaign.
She and her husband at the time, early Google programmer Scott Hassan, helped organize elaborate fundraisers and dinners for tech bigwigs.
“My role was to bring in Silicon Valley people for the $50,000- and $100,000-per-plate dinners,” Huynh said.
“[We] brought in [Google co-founders] Sergey [Brin], Larry [Page] and Eric [Schmidt]. Obama was a hopeful candidate who was outside of the system.”
She was so passionate about the left that, in 2005, she and Hassan bought a rocking chair that once belonged to Democratic icon John F. Kennedy for nearly $100,00 at auction.
In 2008, she acquired the Shepard Fairey mixed-media artwork that the iconic Obama “Hope” posters were based on, paying more than $1 million for the work on canvas.
Now, as President Biden’s term draws to a close, Huynh feels that she had been sold a bill of goods. “I think Biden has been out of touch,” she told The Post. “He’s asleep at the wheel.”
Exasperated by violent crime and illicit drug use in America, the 48-year-old Vietnamese immigrant, who helped build some of the world’s first e-commerce websites and once lived down the street from Steve Jobs in Silicon Valley, has done a total 180 when it comes to her politics.
No longer identifying as a left-leaning Democrat, she calls herself an Independent — and she’s vocally backing Donald Trump.
She recently traveled from her home in Palo Alto, Calif., to Florida to show support for the former president at a fundraiser at Mar-A-Lago and hopes to attend more.
