The Nourishing Asian Kitchen
My first cookbook, written to keep my mother's family recipes for my daughters. After it came out, Google invited me to teach employees a cooking demo.
About
Wisdom meets engineering.
I'm Sophia Eng. I've spent 15+ years in growth, I've written two books about traditional Asian food and farming, and I split my time between Silicon Valley and our farm in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains, where most weekends you'll find me in the milking barn. Those sound like three different people until you see how I work.
Where I started
A Silicon Valley kid who started QBasic programming in fifth grade
I studied biology at George Washington University, where I started the Vietnamese Students Association and ran it for three years. That was my first try at building something from nothing.
Then I took a route into tech that most career advice would have talked me out of.
Two businesses before tech
Nobody hands you a funnel when you own the business
10,000+Customers
60Employees
7 figuresIn sales
I got into real estate and lending in 2006, while I was in grad school. Next we turned an empty cell phone store into a frozen yogurt shop, built the hype online before the doors opened, and sold it after it hit seven figures.
I wrote the ads, watched which ones brought people through the door, and learned that the cheapest customer isn't always the best one. I've used that lesson in every tech job since.
Into tech, the long way
From AutoCAD mobile to AI-native go-to-market
After the sale I rewrote my LinkedIn profile night after night for six weeks until recruiters started calling.
Almost every move after that started with a recruiter finding me there.
12M+ users
I helped launch the AutoCAD 360 mobile app.
workday.com
I led the digital marketing and digital optimization team behind it and ran SEO and SEM.
Free to enterprise
I ran paid and organic acquisition from free sign-up through enterprise pipeline at a product-led growth (PLG) company.
2 courses
I built and taught growth marketing alongside Sean Ellis and persuasive psychology alongside Roger Dooley.
Today I'm Director of Growth Marketing at Journify, a VC-backed B2B startup, and I write Growth, Engineered, where I share what I'm learning about AI and go-to-market.
Leaving the Valley
I didn't leave tech.
I'm the daughter of immigrants. I grew up watching my family make something out of nothing, and make it fast, and I was a Silicon Valley girl writing code in the 90s.
In 2020, our family decided we wanted to grow our own food the old way, by hand, so we left full-time Silicon Valley life for a farm in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains. I split my time between East and West, in traditions and in locations, and I still run growth for a living.
Soil takes years to build and an afternoon to wreck.
I think about that every time someone wants to double an ad budget on a Friday. Writing The Nourishing Asian Kitchen taught me the other half: the playbook that launches a B2B product will launch a cookbook too, as long as the story underneath it is true.
AI-native GTM
Growth teams are being rebuilt around AI
Work that used to take a team of specialists, from finding the right accounts to getting a lead in front of the right salesperson, can now run on systems one operator builds with AI.
GTM engineering
Connects the tools and data between a first touch and a sales conversation.
Signal engineering
Sends real revenue back to the ad platforms, so they learn from deals instead of clicks.
AI makes the work fast. Knowing what to connect, which data to trust and what a number means still comes from years of running campaigns and owning the results.
How I think about growth
Growth is a systems problem.
I judge paid media by what happens after the form fill. Over 20 years in real estate and mortgage lending, building a brand with my family, I watched the cheapest leads turn into the most expensive ones, because nobody called them back.
A relay is won or lost in the handoffs, and so is a funnel.
I learned to care about the handoffs on a high school track team, where we practiced passing the baton until nobody dropped it.
- Was the lead routed to a person in minutes?
- Did sales book a meeting?
- Did the ad platform ever find out which leads became revenue?
Artificial Intelligence × Ancestral Intelligence
Two kinds of intelligence.
Artificial
I use AI every day at work, and the speed is real. The judgment about what to build with it, and what a number means, comes from 15 years of running campaigns and owning the results.
Ancestral
My grandfather taught me to make fish fertilizer and fermented plant juice, and our family later studied Korean Natural Farming together in Hawaii. It's knowledge generations figured out by watching closely and waiting.
My youngest daughter has logged every animal born on our farm since she was about two, so we can track lineage. This year she turned that log into a coloring book using Gemini and Claude, and paid for the first print run with her own money. She has since vibe-coded her own app to track the animals. That's the balance I'm trying to raise my kids with.
Growth is more than what I do. It's how I live.
Outside of work
The rest of me
At board game night my friends call me Monica.
Most weekends you'll find me in the milking barn or out on our beyond-organic backyard farm. I get far too excited about clever marketing and a beautiful website.
I like being around women doing brave things. I'm picky about what goes on our table and generous about who gets a seat at it, and I'd rather build something slowly and well than fast and fragile.
Books and the things we've built
Outside the day job
The Nourishing Asian Homestead
With a foreword by Joel Salatin. I first came across Joel's talk at Google about 15 years ago, and his ideas about stewardship followed me through every tech job since.
Call To Farms
We are a military family answering the call to farm, and this is the podcast and community we run for people starting a homestead of their own. The guests we bring on are the movers and shakers of the food and farming world. Many of my partner Tim's clients at The Homesteading Agent, his real estate and lending team, find him through the books and the show.
What I'm building next
Follow along in public.
Growth, Engineered, my newsletter on what 15+ years of growth have taught me, launched in 2026.
Quick answers
Questions people ask about my work
Who is Sophia Eng?
Sophia Eng is a B2B growth leader and author with 15+ years in paid media and growth at Autodesk, Workday, InVision and Smartsheet. She is Director of Growth Marketing at Journify, writes Growth, Engineered, a free newsletter on Substack, and is the author of The Nourishing Asian Kitchen and The Nourishing Asian Homestead.
What is Growth, Engineered?
Growth, Engineered is Sophia Eng's free newsletter about building B2B growth with AI, paid media and the signals that predict revenue. It launched in 2026. Each edition includes takeaways, a story with research, an original chart, a checklist and three news items. Subscribe at sophiaeng.substack.com.
What is AI-native go-to-market?
AI-native go-to-market is a way of running B2B acquisition and sales where AI handles work that used to need a team of specialists, from finding the right accounts to getting a lead in front of the right salesperson. People still make the judgment calls: which data to trust, what to connect and what a number means.
What is signal engineering in marketing?
Signal engineering is the work of sending accurate conversion and revenue data back to ad platforms, so their bidding learns from closed deals instead of form fills. Sophia's view is that the goal isn't more leads, it's more of the signals that predict revenue.
What did Sophia Eng do at Workday?
At Workday, Sophia led the digital marketing and digital optimization team behind workday.com and ran SEO and SEM. Before that she helped launch the AutoCAD 360 mobile app at Autodesk, which reached more than 12 million users, and after Workday she ran paid and organic acquisition for InVision's product-led growth (PLG) motion.
What does Sophia Eng speak about?
Sophia speaks about AI-native go-to-market, connecting ad spend to revenue, growth as a systems problem, and Artificial Intelligence × Ancestral Intelligence. She has spoken at Google headquarters in Mountain View, Google's #IamRemarkable event, GrowthHackers Conference, SaaStock, Wise Traditions, the Modern Homesteading Conference and Hack Your Health, and she taught growth marketing at CXL alongside Sean Ellis.
What books has Sophia Eng written?
Sophia wrote The Nourishing Asian Kitchen, an award-winning cookbook, and The Nourishing Asian Homestead, published by Chelsea Green in October 2026, with a foreword by Joel Salatin. Both carry recipes and farming knowledge handed down from her mother and grandfather.
How do I invite Sophia Eng to speak or partner on content?
Use the contact form on sophiaeng.com or email sophia@sophiaeng.com. Sophia reads every message herself and replies within 24 hours.