Join us in The BreakLine Arena as we share engaging conversations from our BreakLine community in celebration of this most recent Asian American & Pacific Islander Heritage Month.

Rocky Takapu was raised by immigrants from Tonga (a subset of Polynesian islands in the South Pacific) looking for greater opportunities in America, Rocky was born in Oakland, California as a first-generation Tongan-American. Growing up in a rough environment and then falling into the street life, Rocky’s family moved him to stay in Hawaii with his uncle for the latter part of his teenage years. He was able to acquire discipline and was shown the opportunities that were available through the United States Air Force.

From there, he was able to leverage his G.I. Bill for his undergraduate studies in Electrical Engineering and later was awarded the Science Mathematics and Research Transformation (SMART) Fellowship through the DoD. He then went out to become a civilian research for DoD and civilian laboratories such as Naval Research Lab and Draper Labs. Looking for a change, Rocky was introduced to Breakline where he was able to break into tech with Facebook. Rocky is now an Infrastructure TPM at Stripe.