I needed to start with a donut, because for me everything starts with a donut.

After my mom and her family fled the genocide in Cambodia, they arrived in the U.S as refugees with little besides the clothes on their backs. My grandma worked a lot of below-minimum-wage jobs, and over time she saved up enough money to start her own donut shop. She called it “Danny’s Donuts”. There was no one in my family named “Danny” and we didn’t know any “Dannys”, but she gave it an American-sounding name to attract customers.

When I was studying at MIT, I struggled to figure out a thesis topic. I wanted it to be something that felt personal, but also embodied my different interests in small businesses, design, and technology.

One evening my partner and I watched the Donut King on Netflix, a documentary about Cambodian refugees across the U.S who started donut shops–just like my grandmother. Many of these donut shop entrepreneurs became incredibly successful, but were on the verge of retirement age. So the documentary diverts attention to the children and grandchildren who grew up in these donut shops and how they wrestle with the “if’s” and “how’s” of carrying on their parents’ and grandparents’ legacy.

It reminded me of how my grandmother’s donut shop connected my family to experiences of the wider Cambodian diaspora in the U.S. As we were sharing our reactions, my partner encouraged me to pursue the topic for my thesis because I would regret not doing something that had personal meaning to me. So I followed her advice, and started reaching out to some of them on social media. This opened up a series of personal connections and conversations with Cambodian-American digital creators across the U.S who also cared about promoting our community.

As part of my thesis, I knew I wanted to learn 3D modeling in Blender. It turns out that the most watched tutorial on YouTube for people who are starting out learning Blender is BlenderGuru’s tutorial where he teaches you how to make a 3D model of a donut.

This donut was the first 3D model I created in Blender. And it would become part of my Master's thesis at MIT–a mobile experience I designed to connect Cambodian-American digital creators with Cambodian local businesses.

But the best part of my donut thesis was not necessarily the end product. What is special for me is how it led me to make connections with a community I had some relationship to, but never felt like I could approach. If you’ve ever seen the donut making process, you’ll notice that kneading dough requires a very involved form of physical labor. And so this donut is also a reminder of gratitude for the many hands that got me to where I am today.

I graduated knowing there will forever be a 3D model of a donut somewhere in the MIT Archive.