How Audrey Tang Became Taiwan's Youngest Cabinet Minister

Audrey Tang is a prolific software developer who is the youngest person—and first transgender person—to be made a cabinet member of Taiwan. Audrey Tang was born in Taiwan on April 18, 1981. During childhood, with a congenital heart defect, Tang found socializing and attending school difficult and dropped out at age 14 to pursue learning alone. Often referred to as a genius and a child prodigy, they started a company at age 15, managing a team of developers and hackers who worked in the coding language Perl. In 2010 Tang became a digital adviser to Apple, where they helped develop Apple’s digital assistant, Siri. They asked to be paid in bitcoin but instead were paid an hourly rate indexed to the value of bitcoin—for a total equivalent in 2014 to about ¥50,000, or about $415, an hour. In just a few years, they were able to retire from traditional work. In 2014 Tang joined a group of activists for a series of weeks-long protests, called the Sunflower Movement, against a trade deal with China that they felt had been negotiated in secret. In the Sunflower Movement’s challenging aftermath, Taiwan offered Tang the position of digital minister. Their dedication to radical transparency could change the relationship between the government and its people. Tang’s goal was to make all information, data, and resources as accessible as possible. One of Tang’s most-publicized accomplishments was creating a frequently updated map of locations where Taiwan’s citizens could find face masks during the COVID-19 pandemic.