Shan-Lyn Ma

Shan-Lyn Ma is the cofounder and CEO of Zola, an online wedding registry, wedding planner, and retailer. In addition, she serves as an advisor at Deliverr, a venture partner at Female Founders Fund, and a board member at Cheetay. She is also an angel investor. Shan-Lyn Ma was born in Singapore and moved to Australia when she was four years old. After graduating from college in Australia, she got her MBA from Stanford University and first job at Yahoo!.

How Zola Founder Shan-Lyn Ma Built The Fastest Growing Wedding Startup | Forbes

Shan-Lyn Ma cofounded Zola in 2013 in New York, along with Felix Lung, Kevin Ryan, and Nobu Nakaguchi. Zola is a free suite of wedding planning tools, including a wedding website, registry, checklist, guest list, seating chart, and gift tracker. Shan-Lyn Ma has helped raise over $190 million for Zola.

Prior to Zola, Shan-Lyn Ma was chief product officer of Chloe + Isabel and Gilt Groupe’s first product lead tasked with defining and evolving the core site experience. For Gilt Groupe, she led key new business launches, including launching and managing their mobile web experience and apps for iPhone, iPad, and Android. Additionally, she was a founder and general manager of Gilt Taste, the brand’s food and wine division. Before her time at Gilt Groupe, Shan-Lyn Ma held product and marketing roles at Yahoo!.

Shan-Lyn Ma holds a bachelor of commerce with honors from the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia, and an MBA in general management and entrepreneurship from Stanford University.

At the University of New South Wales, she also doubled majored in business economics and marketing and earned First-Class Honours in marketing, the Dean's Award from the Faculty of Commerce & Economics, and the AFUW (Australian Foundation of University Women) Scholarship.