1992

Winnie Yingyi Kao M.S. ’92 was born on Sept. 13, 1963, in Hong Kong and lived in California since 1977. After attending Peterson High School in Sunnyvale, she graduated with an engineering degree from UC Berkeley followed by a master’s degree in engineering from SCU. Following university studies, she started her career at AMD and then Hewlett-Packard, where she met her husband, and after that Google, Visa, and Infoblox. She and husband Lee were married at the Stanford Memorial Church in April 1999. Winnie had a passion for language, and in addition to English was fluent in Mandarin, Cantonese, and Shanghainese, as well as having experience with German, French, and Japanese. Love of language, love of music, and a keen intellectual curiosity, are among the many things she shared with her husband. Winnie possessed a peerless level of energy at her core. She was always reading a book, taking a class, practicing yoga, hiking in the mountains, and genuinely engaged. On a Mediterranean cruise ship in recent years, she was the star of the Zumba class. She loved fine cuisine, once taking a four-day culinary trip to New York City with her husband. Her curiosity and empathy for other cultures led her to travel the world. Winnie’s kindness, warmth, and love, often expressed in a smile or a wave touched her family, friends, colleagues, neighbors, and everyone she met. She had uncountable close friends stretching back to her primary school days in Hong Kong and every period in between. She was maid of honor to half a dozen very close friends. Nothing was more important to her than her family and her friends. A beloved wife, daughter, sister, and auntie, Winnie died on May 16, 2019. She was 55 years old. Winnie is survived by her husband, Lee Cosart, her mother, Elizabeth Kao, her brother, Richard Kao, her sister, Janet Kao ’89, and is predeceased by her father, Singyao Kao. Above everything else, she was devoted to her husband and all her family.

22 Aug 2019