Fiona Xiong’s ‘Ordinary’ Guide to an Extraordinary Life

Qiwen (Fiona) Xiong’s dream is to work with  the brightest minds in tech to solve the world’s biggest problems—and it isn’t as far-fetched as it seems. She’s just completed an internship at one of the world’s most innovative tech companies; she’s pursuing a Master’s in Computer Science in Silicon Valley; and she’s engaged in AI research with the potential to improve healthcare. More importantly, she has a track record of achieving ambitious goals.  

“You really can get what you want,” she recently shared on social media. “If you care about your GPA, you can achieve a high GPA. If you care about finding a good job, you can find a good job. If you care about money, you can make money.” 

All it takes is knowing what you want, mapping out the steps to get it, and putting in the work. It’s a formula she’s followed—successfully—for years.

Fiona with her research team and Director of Computing Programs Ilmi Yoon at the December 2024 Student Research Showcase

Joining the Big Four

One of the first big goals Xiong set for herself was to join one of the Big Four accounting firms straight after college. For someone she describes as “ordinary” (at least on paper)—a young woman from an average university living outside a major city—this was no small feat. “Many companies filter us out at the résumé stage,” she explained. “But I wasn’t going to let that stop me.”

Instead, she sought advice, gathered information, and crafted a multi-year plan.

When she finally landed a job at Ernst & Young—the first female accounting major to do so in years—she documented her journey in a 6,000-word post, published on the Chinese blogging platform Weibo, titled The Ordinary Student’s Guide to Breaking Into the Big Four. In it, she  describes the steps she took to qualify for an auditor position, starting in her sophomore year of college, and the rollercoaster of emotions she felt along the way.

“I experienced hope and disappointment time and time again, and when I finally got the call from HR, it was like receiving a love letter from my past self—I wanted to laugh and cry at the same time,” she wrote.  

Her post was viewed over 350,000 times. 

She didn’t stop there. As she moved up at Ernst & Young, she continued helping young professionals, particularly women with similar backgrounds and aspirations, through her online writing. Her subsequent posts, The Ordinary Student’s Guide to Crafting a Résumé  and The Ordinary Girl’s Guide to Surviving the Workplace, also received thousands of views.

Transitioning into tech

Meanwhile, Xiong, now a senior auditor, began growing  frustrated with some of the outdated processes at work—like having to constantly copy and paste financial information from text files to Excel. At the suggestion of a friend, she taught herself Python, automating hours of manual data entry. “That was the signal for me to go into tech,” she said.

Once again, she didn’t let her unconventional background—a bachelor’s degree in accounting—stand in her way. “When I decide something, I won’t stop until I get it,” she said. She discovered the Align Master’s program, which provides a direct pathway to an MS in Computer Science for professionals from non-computing fields. Soon, she was leaving China and her auditing career behind to start a new chapter in Silicon Valley.

On Fiona’s last day at Ernst & Young, her colleagues sent her off with flowers and well wishes

Becoming a software engineer

She describes her transition from  senior auditing professional to  computer science student as exciting, but not without challenges and moments of self-doubt. “I failed and felt like I wasn’t good enough several times. Once, I even cried in the library out of frustration when I couldn’t solve a problem,” she said. “But I dried my tears, kept studying, and reminded myself that failure is often a sign of growth. Sometimes, pain means you’re changing into a better version of yourself.”

Xiong did change: She acquired the technical skills that helped her  land a competitive internship at Amazon Web Services (AWS), which led to a future employment offer. But becoming a software engineer was about more about than just mastering development tools, she shared at a student panel about co-op and internship on campus this fall. It was about a change of mindset.

Fiona posed for a photo on the final day of her internship at AWS in Seattle

Entering the internship, she brought with her the strict expectations from her career in accounting: rules and standards are set in accordance with regulations, and employees must follow them rigorously.

But when she asked her mentors at AWS if they could provide her with instructions for the work she’d been assigned, they said there were none—that engineers forge their path. “We have to develop our own way to solve a problem, we have to think all the time. And this is also the most interesting part [of being] an engineer,”she noted.

In addition to a software engineer, Xiong  also became a researcher, working as a part of a team that develops innovative educational technology with a social impact. Their first project, Nurse Town, is an AI video game designed for nurse training. The game, which helps nursing students hone their communication skills through interactions with virtual patients, is the first of its kind to integrate advanced AI through LLMs, and won third place in the 2024 Northeastern Research Showcase 2024.

Sometimes, even she can’t believe all the cutting-edge projects she’s involved in. “I still feel like I’m dreaming,” she said.

Fiona’s research project won third prize from the panel of judges at the Student Research Showcase in December, 2024

Sharing knowledge online

Although a lot has changed in Xiong’s life and career, one thing has stayed the same: her passion for writing and sharing knowledge online. A seasoned content creator on social platforms Weibo and RED, where she’s amassed over 10,000 followers in the past five years, she’s become an inspiration for aspiring tech professionals from non-traditional backgrounds.

“Previously, my readers were girls between 15 and 30 years old, trying to figure out how to get good grades, find a job, or succeed as entry-level employees,” she said. “Nowadays, my audience is people who are interested in tech.”

She’s promised her followers new, detailed guides soon—one on studying abroad and another on how to land a job at a FAANG company.

Interested in reading Qiwen (Fiona) Xiong’s career content? She writes on Weibo under a pen name, but you can find her on LinkedIn and Rednote.