Priscilla Chan's education, career, and life, from Harvard to the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative

• Priscilla Chan met Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg at Harvard University.
• The couple married in 2012 and have three daughters.
• She spends most of her time on the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative. Here's a look at her life.

Priscilla Chan is Mark Zuckerberg's wife. The couple met as students at Harvard University.

Here's Chan's story, from graduating as valedictorian of her Massachusetts high school to running a huge charitable foundation with her husband, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg.

Chan was born on February 24, 1985, to Chinese refugee parents who fled to the US from Vietnam before she was born. She was born in Baintree, Massachusetts.

Chan said that growing up, her mom worked two jobs, while she would interpret for her grandparents who couldn't speak any English. Chan said she was once voted "class genius" at high school.   

Chan attended Quincy High School in Massachusetts. where she graduated in 2003 as class valedictorian and was in the robotics club. Chan was accepted into Harvard after graduating from Quincy, majoring in biology.

Chan met Zuckerberg at Harvard in 2003. The pair struck up a conversation during a party at Zuckerberg's Jewish fraternity Alpha Epsilon Pi, while they waited to use the restroom.  

Chan was among the first people to join Facebook, on Feb. 5, 2004.

After graduating from Harvard in 2007, she went on to study medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, specializing in pediatrics, and graduated five years later. 

In September 2010, Chan moved in with Zuckerberg. He announced the news on Facebook.

"Priscilla Chan is moving in this weekend," he wrote. "Now we have 2x everything, so if you need any household appliances, dishes, glasses, etc please come by and take them before we give them away."

Chan said she started learning Spanish after realizing several of her patients spoke the language. She also speaks English and Cantonese.

Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan married in a backyard ceremony on May 19, 2012, the day after Facebook listed on the New York Stock Exchange at a $104 billion valuation. 

The couple share three daughters: Maxima, August, and Aurelia Chan Zuckerberg.

In a Facebook post from July 2015, Zuckerberg revealed Chan suffered three miscarriages before giving birth to Maxima.

Chan is not Jewish; her husband said in a Facebook post that she's Buddhist. Zuckerberg reads his children a bedtime prayer in Mandarin, she said.

Most of Chan's time is spent running the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, a not-for-profit set up using Zuckerberg's Meta wealth.

Chan and her husband founded the charity in 2015, with Zuckerberg pledging to give 99% of his Meta shares to charitable causes over his lifetime. This replicated Warren Buffett's famous Giving Pledge. Mark Zuckerberg's net worth is $96 billion.

In 2015, Chan and Zuckerberg opened a private school in East Palo Alto for disadvantaged children called The Primary School. 

CZI conducted layoffs in 2023, not long after Meta's layoffs.