'Valley Verified' is the second novel by the Stanford graduate who has worked as a data analyst while writing stories about her community locally and abroad. 'I grew up reading stories, but it felt like the main character was always white, always blonde, blue-eyed. And for the longest time, I couldn't see myself in the books that I was reading. I couldn't find the main character that I could really relate to and identify with,' Zhao told KPIX.
' And that's the image that I tried to portray about myself to the people around me. That's what my protagonist was trying to tell the people around her. But at the end of the day, we were both lying to ourselves, and it took the entire book to come to terms with that,' Zhao said. In the novel, Zoe decides to give up her career in fashion and the life she's built for herself in New York to move to Silicon Valley and start a new job working for an app startup.