Children are the seeds and school is the soil;
We are the sunshine and the rain

Tien Nguyen, Founder/Chief Executive Officer
Mr. Nguyen has been an entrepreneur in the wireless industry for more than ten years. Prior to founding AppleTree Educational™, Mr. Nguyen founded CommASIC Inc to develop Universal Wireless Architecture engines for multimode, low cost and low power consumption. In 2005, Freescale Semiconductor acquired ComASIC Inc. Previously, in 1997, Mr. Nguyen owned a consulting firm, LinkCom Inc, where he was the principal architect and chief designer of CDMA ASIC developed for VLSI Technologies. Mr. Nguyen also held multiple management positions at Nextwave, Qualcomm, Conexant, Philips and General Dynamics, where he defined the company’s direction and strategy, and engaged in corporate processes, corporate operations and managing research and development. Mr. Nguyen graduated from San Diego State University with a BSEE.

Diane Hsu, Founder/Vice President of Operations
Mrs. Hsu earned her Bachelor’s degree in Business Administration from San Jose State University and received her Montessori Education Certificate from California State University-Hayward. Early in her career she held several high level positions and has had a broad-based professional history which has enabled her to bring a solid foundation of business acumen to the formation of the AppleSeed family of schools. Mrs. Hsu has been working with children for more than ten years and is a fully qualified school administrator and teacher. In 1996, Mrs. Hsu and her two sisters founded AppleSeed Montessori, Inc. and have helped it grow to five schools with more than 1200 students. Her vision of bringing the highest quality of education to children on an international scale has begun to be a reality and her devotion to this goal makes her a one of a kind leader.

Lynda Brown, Founder/Vice President of Research & Development
Lynda Brown is a graduate of the College of Notre Dame with a Master’s Degree in Education and a Primary Teaching Credential from the American Montessori Society. She worked as a teacher and school director at AppleSeed Montessori School for the past 10 years. In addition, she co-founded AppleSeed Montessori Schools and AppleSeed International School in the Sunnyvale, Cupertino and San Jose area with her two sisters, Diane Hsu and Alice Huang. Prior to that, she worked as both assistant teacher and lead teacher at a few Montessori schools for eight years. Mrs. Brown has eighteen years of excellent evaluations, which include a Sunnyvale Award for Excellence in Early Education from the Sunnyvale Child Care Advisory Board on June 25, 2005. Lynda Brown is a very devoted early childhood educator. She is always trying to enrich her knowledge not only with Montessori methods but also other theories and methods in Early Childhood Education. Doing so helps her to implement and maintain a high quality of service which will enhance the development of children in the schools she manages. She believes in providing teacher training which will effectively motivate caregivers to be enthusiastic toward their job.

Alice Huang, Founder/Controller
Mrs. Huang graduated from San Jose State University with a Bachelor’s of Science degree in Business Administration. After graduation, Mrs. Huang worked in accounting for a high tech hardware company in Silicon Valley and has since then been an entrepreneur, opening and operating several coffee shops and cafés prior to joining her sisters and starting the first school in 1996. Mrs. Huang has over 18 years of business management experience and in 1998 co-founded an educational materials company to support their schools and has since expanded as a well known national educational distribution company. Mrs. Huang is currently acting as the financial controller for five entities managing multi-million dollar budgets.

Richard Huang, Founder/Vice President of Strategic Business Development
Mr. Huang has over 15 years of operational and business experience. Throughout his career, Mr. Huang has helped start several companies, including educational companies, high tech start-ups, and service and retail businesses. His responsibilities include raising angel funding, managing sales and marketing, purchasing and logistics, facility management, HR, and operations. Mr. Huang has assisted in transitioning of several of these companies to public corporations. Among these are the purchase of Iconn Wireless, a wireless communication company by Wavecom, Inc., and the acquisition of CommASIC, Inc. by Freescale Semiconductor. Mr. Huang has served as Product Manager for NeoPoint, Inc. (the first Smart Phone manufacturer), Managing Director in charge of U.S. operations for TZT (a connector design and manufacturing company), Director of Operations for Iconn Wireless and CommASIC, General Manager for AppleSeed Educational, Inc. (an educational distribution company), and currently sits on the board of Partage Ventures, LLC and AppleSeed San Diego.