Jean Lin is a New York City-based gallerist, founder of design gallery and studio Colony, and author of What We Keep, published in 2024. Trained as a fashion designer, she has professional experience as a fashion designer, interior designer, editor, writer, trend forecaster, educator, and curator. Lin has served as part-time faculty at her alma mater, Parsons School of Design, and a guest lecturer and critic at Rhode Island School of Design, Pratt Institute, Massachusetts College of Art and Design, and Tama Art University in Tokyo.

The daughter of Taiwanese immigrants, Jean came of age in the 1980s and ’90s in a middle-class Asian household in Massachusetts suburbia. Design, style and aesthetics were not a consideration, while family, integrity and hard work were. After a few slightly rebellious years, Lin finally came to understand the power and merit of the latter. Only after she embraced her heritage of values has Lin been able to fully explore who she truly is and what she has to offer the world: Finding and sharing the substance behind beauty beyond what is most readily prescribed.