Yang lived in
Jersey City, New Jersey, before moving to
Pasadena to attend the
California Institute of Technology. He graduated in 1977 with a bachelor's degree in
electrical engineering. He went on to obtain a master's degree at
Stanford University in the same field, and worked as a senior design engineer at
Intel. He returned to Stanford to earn an MBA, and worked briefly at
Bain & Company before moving to Asia in 1983. He became a naturalized US citizen on 2 September 1977. On 15 December 1979 in Santa Clara, California, he married Winnie Sui-king Yung, daughter of the Chairman and founder of Hong Kong-based Shell Electric Manufacturing (
蜆殼電器). She became a US citizen on 8 August 1984. Yang joined Shell Electric in 1983 and served as Executive Director until resigning on 30 September 2003. He was a director during its
initial public offering and the sale of its fibre-optic business to
JDSU. He moved to JDSU in 1999. Afterwards he became involved in
venture capital and
private equity. In 2003 he was appointed CEO of the
Hong Kong Cyberport Management Company. ==In academia and government==