Priscilla Chan (Zuckerberg) is a product of her experiences as an outsider

Priscilla Chan

IN A RARE interview, Priscilla Chan explains how her goals and the goals of her husband, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, were shaped by her personal story.

Usually, Priscilla Chan prefers to stay in the background while her famous husband basks in the limelight. But the Bay Area News Group was able to get an exclusive interview with one-half of the most richest couples in the country.

The daughter of immigrant parents who were among the boat people who fled communist Vietnam, Priscilla Chan grew up in Quincy, Massachusetts, a community with hardly any other Asian/Americans.

"My identity, I felt, was so distinct. I felt very much like an outsider. My family didn't have the same rituals that everyone else seemed to have," she said.

Being an outsider and having to work harder for acceptance became part of her DNA through high school and college and now in her career as a pediatrician in the San Francisco Bay Area.

While at Harvard, she began working with the kids from housing projects It was an eye-opening experience and made her realize that all the tutoring in the world was not going to make the housing projects a safe place in which to grow up.

RELATED: Chan & Zuckerberg to start for disadvantaged youth

She found the same situation in the Bay Area's East Palo Alto and that led to her and Zuckerberg, founder of Facebook, to found a charter school in the tough neighborhood that will provide more than the 3R's for its students.

To read the entire interview, click here.