A letter from our founder, Jennie Yoon.

First roll call in middle school. The teacher got to 혜정 (Hye Jung) and paused.

I raised my hand and said quietly, "You can call me Jennie."

My cousin and I had picked that name the week before because it was easy to say and I liked the way it sounded. It took twenty minutes to choose. I answered to it for the next twenty years.

I wanted to belong, and giving up my name felt like the fastest way I knew how. It wasn't a dramatic moment. It was a small one. A pause, and a twelve year old filling it.

I think most of us have a version of that pause. The nickname you offered before anyone asked. The spelling you stopped correcting. The way you learned to say your own name a little differently so someone else could say it more easily. Or the smelly lunch that you were embarrassed to open.

Dear Kaia is a letter to my daughter, everything I hope she'll know one day, made in gold and released one chapter at a time. The first chapter was Korean, where my story began, then came Chinese, Japanese, Vietnamese, and Thai.

Now the letter opens wider still, in French, Hebrew, Spanish, Arabic, Italian, and more. Because the pause I felt at twelve years old was never mine alone to hold. It belongs to anyone who has softened a name, translated it, or waited a lifetime to hear it said the way it was always meant to be said. This letter was always going to reach you, too.