About

Founder & Software Engineer

Hey! I'm Chaira (ich heiße Chaira/ฉันชื่อชายร่า) and I'm a software engineer based in New York City. In addition to my work as an engineer, I lead a startup, Asaply, as a co-founder and CEO.

Having grown up internationally, I am driven by and committed to developing technology and businesses that uplift communities and bridge cultural divide through greater connectivity.

Outside of tech, I am an enthusiastic athlete and love all things sports, music, food, and travel. In my free time, I box out of FAA CT.


Skills

Java 100%
C++/C 100%
Google Cloud Platform100%
Python 100%
Swift 90%
SQL100%

Resume

Download my resume here!

Work

United Nations UNIS — Software Engineer

June 2025 - Present

New York, NY

Build internal systems and tools that optimize manual workflows across UNIS, enabling scalable efficiency and significantly reducing operational costs.

Asaply Inc. - Chief Executive Officer

April 2026 - Present

Delaware & New York, NY

Asaply is a checkout engine that allows users to order from their iMessage/SMS app using AI. Asaply currently operates with a team of 10.

Kiwa (Subcompany T2UE) — Systems Analyst Intern

June 2024 - August 2024

Kiwa

Developed automated invoice masking for Kiwa's finance team.

NextNode LLC — Founder & Software Engineer

2023 - Present

New York, NY; Connecticut; Massachusetts | nextnode.technology

Founded NextNode in 2023. Leading a team that serves over 20 clients, delivering custom-coded websites and iOS applications that boost customer sales and enhance digital presence.

Experience

Dell & NVIDIA AI Summit Hackathon

Dec 2025

Developed Relooped, an agentic DJ platform.

Placed 7th of 600 engineers. Built a system of agentic DJs to generate and mix Strudel code via natural language.

Pyx Boxing - Founder

2023 - Present

Pyx Boxing

Directed a 10-person multidisciplinary team to pitch, design and launch competitive women's boxing gear for a $30B+ global market.

Testing prototypes with 3 professional female fighters.

OpenAI GPT-5 Startup Hackathon - Founder & Finalist

Built Asaply, an AI checkout engine, placing Top 6 of 300 engineers at OpenAI's GPT-5 Hackathon in NYC.

UBS × Anthropic AI FinTech Hackathon — Top 6 Finalist

Created ValueSpotter, a computer vision app for M&A firms that estimates valuations from videos or images using reverse image search; significantly reduced manual appraisal time. Team of 4.

VEX Robotics

Lead programmer for the 1st place team at the Vietnam National Robotics Tournament, Ho Chi Minh City (Jan 2020).

AI4ALL

Selected scholar in the Natural Language Processing track of Stanford × Simon Fraser University's AI4ALL program (Summer 2020).

Xd Hacks Vancouver

3rd Place at Xd Hacks Mini Vancouver (Jan 2021). Developed cybersecurity detection and recommendation tool that evaluated users' online security practices (team of 5).

Education

Bachelors: Computer Science

2021-2025

Smith College, Northampton, MA

Undergraduate studies in computer science with a focus in entrepreneurship and finance.

Awards & Accomplishments:

Grade 12

2020-2021

Kelowna Secondary School, Kelowna, BC, Canada

Awards & Accomplishments:

  • Graduated high school at École Kelowna Secondaire.
  • Led Rotary Club fundraising for Hagar International.
  • Recipient of the COBS Kelowna Pride Society scholarship.

Grade 10 & 11

2018-2020

Concordia International School, Hanoi, Vietnam

Awards & Accomplishments:

  • Honor Roll with Distinction (2019, 2020)
  • Vietnam National VEX Robotics Championship Winner
  • Vietnam National VEX Robotics - Design Award
  • Female Athlete of the Year (2019)
  • Varsity Basketball MVP (2019)
  • XC Coach's Award (2020)
  • Varsity Volleyball Coach's Award (2020)

Service

Pathways Project with UNIS, Google, PwC

New York, NY

Led full-stack development for an AI learning platform built on top of Google's NotebookLM, developed in collaboration with Google engineers to help girls in West Africa pass the WAEC exam. 97/100 girls passed, earning their high school diploma. Presented at the UNGA in NY (2026).

10Seven Wealth Justice

New York, NY

Provided engineering consultancy for Smith College's financial literacy initiative with 10Seven, expanding student financial education and enabling students to claim $500 Smith-funded investment accounts after graudation.

Wieder

Wieder.world

Engineered a gamified, spaced-repetition platform to eliminate financial barriers in education, adopted by Smith's German department for 2+ years.

Tech Lab Assistant

2023 - 2024

Northampton, MA

Taught children K-6 robotics and how to code (Scratch, SPIKE Prime, Spheros, FIRST Robotics, Makey-Makey).

Encode Justice

2020 - 2021

encodejustice.ca

Started and co-lead the Canada Chapter of Encode Justice, where we focused on advocacy, education, and policy around algorithmic bias in Canada. Previously worked with parent organization Encode Justice.

STEAM Outreach Team: Robotics Member

2021 - 2022

Western Massachusetts

Helped K-12 kids at the Boys & Girls club of western massachsuetts learn STEAM skills such as robotics through sets such as Lego Mindstorms.

Concordia Summer School Teacher's Aide

June 2020

Concordia International School, Hanoi, Vietnam

Volunteer teacher's aide for Concordia International School elementary school program during the pandemic.

Tennis Coach

2017 - 2020

Chiang Mai, Thailand & Hanoi, Vietnam

Coached tennis to children aged 5-11.

Hanoi Homie: Helping Hanoi's Houseless

August 2018 - June 2019

Hanoi, Vietnam

Organized groups to fund and provide resources to houseless people. Launched Hanoi Homie (hanoihomie.com) , a guide to local resources for houseless individuals in Hanoi.

Tutoring Children

2017 - 2019

Chiang Mai, Thailand & Hanoi, Vietnam

Tutored non-native English-speaking students English and math.

Portfolio

Related Projects

Click on a project to view its code repo!

  • All
  • AI/ML
  • iOS
  • Web
  • Data
  • Other fun!

Wohna iOS

A women-centered housing and subleasing platform built in Swift. Functional search and filtering.

Gitsta

Network calls mini project with iOS dev and Git's REST API

Auxy

In-the-works AI-powered DJ that remixes royalty-free tracks live.

Chai's Bias

SwiftUI news aggregator that uses the News API to fetch and display articles.

War Card Game Project

iOS app implementation of the War Card Game from 2019.

Minimax Algorithm ChessBot

Command-line chess bot that uses the Minimax algorithm with alpha-beta pruning to determine optimal moves.

queery

Mini Search Engine demonstrating Singular Value Decomposition in MATLAB

Python Portscanner

Python port scanner that detects open and closed ports on a target IP using multiple scanning modes (normal, SYN, FIN) and supports ordered or randomized port scanning.

Pyx Boxing

Re-Engineering boxing equipment for women. Site developed by myself using Astro and Netlify.

Slick Flights.

Java console game to find the cheapest flight route between airports. HashMap and DSA-focused project.

Bikesia (Valetbike)

A mock bike share system in the Western Massachusetts valley built with Ruby on Rails.

Winegorithm

A Python NLP project that suggests food and wine pairings. Current version classifies wine based on descriptors.

Hanoi Homie

Find communities and resources to help the houseless in Hanoi, Vietnam.

Homemade Binary Clock

Who wouldn't want to read the time in binary?

Nutriest

A nutritional estimation model using a Convolutional Neural Network (CNN). Open notebook file in Google Colab.

Holyoke Dinosaur Footprints

Discovering and documenting the history of dinosaur footprints in Holyoke, MA for a Smith College landscape studies project.

$pending Wrapped

A personal finance SQL analysis project.

Recursive Maze Solver

Visually solving various mazes recursively in Java!

Image Manipulation in MATLAB

Matrix transformations and custom functions to apply grayscale, sepia, hue rotation, and blur effects to an image, exploring fundamental concepts in image processing.

Cachebite

iOS on-campus delivery project at Smith College

FSA AI Word Generator

FSA (Finite State Automata) Word Generator for CSC 290: Artificial Intelligence

Contact

Contact Me

Send me an email! I respond within 24 hours. Phone number on resume (download from Home page).

harderchaira@gmail.com || chairachananharder@gmail.com

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