Our Team

Jacky and Connor form the core of Sonder and their 15 years of friendship and endless talks about life, society, health, and fulfillment are the basis for most of Sonder's features.

On the left are Jacky and Connor at ages 12 & 19.

The original idea for what became Sonder was Jacky's, and his passion for and devotion to the project are the foundation of all we do here. He brings both technical and psychological expertise to the project. Jacky graduated from USC with a degree in electrical engineering and self-studied his way into a software engineering role at Cisco his senior year. Constantly learning and improving his skills, he was acquired by a company and promoted to Senior Fullstack Engineer and Architect a year and a half later. His devotion to technical excellence, constant improvement, and empowering people drives the vision of Sonder forward.

In May 2016, Connor took a bus from Arizona to USC to visit Jacky, determined to pick one of the dozens of ideas the two had talked about and form a startup around it. Instead, Jacky proposed a new idea, and the two got to work on it. Over the next two days, they sketched out ideas on a whiteboard and when Connor got back to Arizona, he dropped out of college and started working on the designs for Sonder and reading all he could about what it takes to make a startup successful. He is responsible for much of the UI/UX of Sonder and led development of the React Native app.

Stephanie, a full stack developer, turns Sonder’s core principles into fully formed products and features. Having studied Statistics and Actuarial Mathematics at UCLA, she ventured into the insurance industry, then investment management upon graduation. She eventually found herself gravitating to the challenging and gratifying work of software engineering, excited by its potential to shape the world we live in and solve large-scale societal issues. Her expertise in databases, front-end frameworks, and back-end technologies help bring the vision of Sonder to life.

Justin is a full stack developer who embodies many of Sonder’s core values and works on building out and improving features. He studied Computer Science at ASU and explored the entertainment industry before eventually gravitating back towards software engineering. He has a passion for uplifting others and brings expertise in user first thinking, design, and front-end technologies to help bring Sonder one step closer to its goals.