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Xiaoyan grew up in China where she was sent to a village to do manual labor before she turned eighteen. After the Cultural Revolution, she was one of the first mainland Chinese to study at Stanford University (Ph.D. Communication, 1987). With her research spanning 60+ countries, Xiaoyan has delivered presentations on all continents about cultural values and social change to clients including The World Bank, United Nations Peacekeeping, Washington DC diplomatic community, and Global Summit of Women.

After almost three decades of a career with a global team headquartered in New York, she is now working on creative writing projects including a novel which takes place in 1960's China. Xiaoyan has attended the Stanford Creative Writing workshops and the Northern California Writers’ Retreat. She has lived in New York, Hong Kong, and Silicon Valley with her husband, a CBS News and PBS journalist and documentary filmmaker (https://irvdrasnin.net). Three of Xiaoyan’s poems are published in The Iowa Review (Spring, 2024) https://iowareview.org/