18 Facts About Audrey Tang

Audrey Tang is a Taiwanese politician and free software programmer who served as the first Minister of Digital Affairs of Taiwan from August 2022 to May 2024.

Audrey Tang has been described as one of the "ten greatest Taiwanese computing personalities".

Audrey Tang was born in Taipei to father Audrey Tang Kuang-hua and mother Lee Ya-ching.

Audrey Tang was a child prodigy, reading works of classical literature before the age of five, advanced mathematics before six, and programming before eight.

In late 2005, Audrey Tang began transitioning to female, including changing her English and Chinese names, citing a need to reconcile her outward appearance with her self-image.

The television news channel ETToday reported that Audrey Tang has an IQ of 180.

Audrey Tang has been a vocal proponent for autodidacticism and anarchism.

On CPAN, Audrey Tang initiated over 100 Perl projects between June 2001 and July 2006, including the popular Perl Archive Toolkit, a cross-platform packaging and deployment tool for Perl 5.

Audrey Tang is responsible for setting up smoke test and digital signature systems for CPAN.

In October 2005, Audrey Tang was a speaker at O'Reilly Media's European Open Source Convention in Amsterdam.

Audrey Tang became involved in politics during Taiwan's 2014 Sunflower Student Movement demonstrations, in which Audrey Tang volunteered to help the protesters occupying the Taiwanese parliament building broadcast their message.

The prime minister invited Audrey Tang to build media literacy curricula for Taiwan's schools, which was implemented in late 2017.

At age 35, Audrey Tang was the youngest minister without portfolio in Taiwanese history and was given this role to bridge the gap between the older and younger generations.

Audrey Tang joined the G0v movement shortly after its formation, and participated in the Sunflower Student Movement through that community.

In January 2023 Audrey Tang became an e-resident of Lithuania which was announced during her first foreign visit as Digital Affairs minister in Vilnius, Lithuania.

Audrey Tang became the chairperson of Taiwan's National Institute of Cyber Security board.

In May 2024, upon the inauguration of Lai Ching-te as the new president of Taiwan, Audrey Tang was replaced by Huang Yen-nun as minister for digital affairs.

In October 2024, Audrey Tang was named one of ten new ambassadors-at-large.