Chance Lim: Building What Didn't Exist
- Carrie Circosta
- 7 days ago
- 7 min read
From TikTok to CrossWorld, Chance Lim is helping international students find answers—and each other.
"International students are very underrepresented," says Chance Lim. Rather than waiting for someone else to change that, she started sharing her own experiences online. What began as a few TikTok videos grew into something much bigger: a community where thousands of students can find answers, support, and the confidence to create opportunities for themselves.
For many content creators, the dream is simple: build an audience, catch the attention of brands, and finally get paid to create.
For Chance Lim, that moment arrived too.
Companies had noticed the content she was creating for international students and began reaching out with paid partnerships. Some offers were worth thousands of dollars. Looking at one of them, she remembers thinking, "This could pay my rent."
She had to turn them down.
As an F-1 international student, accepting paid brand deals wasn't as simple as clicking "yes." If you've been reading International Student Voice, you may remember our recent Immigration Corner explaining why international students often cannot legally earn income from social media.
It was an ironic moment. The platform she had built to help other students had become valuable—but she couldn't fully benefit from it herself.
Instead of walking away, she kept creating.
Long before she built a growing TikTok following or launched CrossWorld—a crowdsourced database of international student-friendly U.S. employers and online community—Chance had developed a habit of looking at problems and asking a simple
question:
Why doesn't a solution exist yet?
Looking Beyond the Bubble
Growing up in South Korea, Chance knew she wanted something different.
She came to the United States to study industrial engineering at Purdue University, drawn by the country's academic reputation and the opportunity to experience a more diverse environment.
She found exactly what she was looking for—but perhaps not in the way she expected.
"I was in a bubble," she says, describing life before college. Around her, success often followed a familiar path: get into a prestigious university, pursue a respected profession, build a stable life.
At Purdue, those assumptions quickly disappeared.
For the first time, she met classmates whose lives looked nothing like her own. Students from farming communities sat beside students from major cities.
Friends pursued careers she had never considered. Success suddenly looked different depending on who she was talking to.
"The diversity wasn't just demographics," she explains. "It was people from different walks of life."
That experience reshaped how she viewed the world—and herself.
It also taught her that one of the greatest benefits of studying abroad isn't just earning a degree. It's discovering there isn't only one way to build a meaningful life.
Create Instead of Consume
Like many Gen Z students, Chance spent plenty of time scrolling through TikTok.
Then one video changed her perspective.
Someone said that if you're going to spend hours consuming content online, you should spend at least some of that time creating it.
The idea stayed with her.
"If I'm going to scroll, I have to create."
But content creation wasn't just about making videos.
Entrepreneurship had always been part of who she was. Before coming to the United States, she had started a nonprofit and ran a tutoring business in South Korea. Once she arrived at Purdue, however, that side of her life took a back seat. Building a new life in a new country, earning her degree, and preparing for a career left little room for entrepreneurial projects.
After graduation, she was ready to rediscover that part of herself.
She experimented with different side projects—from volunteering and film production to learning new technical skills. Content creation was one of several ideas she decided to pursue, but it quickly stood out.
She wasn't trying to become an influencer.
She was trying to build a personal brand.
"I've always been an entrepreneur at heart," she says. "One day I want to build something of my own."
Fresh out of college, she began sharing what she wished someone had known a few years earlier: how to find internships, navigate OPT, apply for jobs, and build a career as an international student.
"I was very proud of what I had achieved after four years of hustling," she says. "I wanted to give people advice."
What surprised her wasn't that people watched.
It was how many people were looking for someone willing to share those experiences.
Looking back, content creation became much more than a side project. It gave her a way to build a personal brand, reconnect with her entrepreneurial instincts, and ultimately laid the foundation for CrossWorld.
The Information Gap
As Chance kept posting, a pattern quickly emerged.
Her inbox filled with messages.
Should I study in the United States?
How should I answer the sponsorship question on a job application?
What happens if I don't get selected in the H-1B lottery?
The questions were different.
The problem was the same.
Students couldn't find trustworthy answers.
"There is not a source of truth," she says. Immigration policies are complicated, frequently changing, and often open to interpretation. Students were piecing together advice from Reddit posts, YouTube videos, friends, and online forums, hoping someone else's experience might apply to their own.
The more messages she received, the more she realized another problem.
International students rarely saw their own experiences reflected publicly.
Too often, conversations about international students focused on stereotypes—that they all came from wealthy families or enjoyed privileged lives. Her own experience told a different story.
Many students were balancing academics with immigration rules, financial pressures, and the uncertainty of whether they would even be allowed to stay in the country after graduation.
Few people were talking openly about those realities.
Chance decided to.
The Conversations Begin
Some of Chance's most popular videos weren't about resumes or interview tips.
They were about mindset.
How do you stay calm when you don't know where you'll be living next year?
How do you keep applying after another rejection?
How do you stop letting immigration uncertainty consume every decision?
Students responded—not because she claimed to have all the answers, but because she was willing to talk honestly about questions they were already asking themselves.
Her direct messages soon became conversations.
Some students wanted help with internships. Others wanted to talk through sponsorship. Many simply wanted reassurance that they weren't alone.
Chance laughs remembering messages that included pages of family history and financial details before asking her to make life-changing decisions.
"I can't tell you," she says. "That's up to you."
Instead of presenting herself as an expert, she shared what had worked for her and encouraged students to make informed decisions for themselves.
She wasn't trying to become an immigration attorney or a career coach.
She was simply one international student saying, "This is what I've learned."
Building What She Couldn't Find
Eventually, answering hundreds of individual messages stopped making sense.
The same questions kept appearing.
The same frustrations surfaced over and over again.
Especially one:
Do you now—or will you in the future—require visa sponsorship?
For many international students, that single question creates enormous anxiety.
Answering honestly can feel risky. Answering dishonestly can create even bigger problems later.
Then she realized something.
Students weren't just looking for answers.
They were looking for each other.
So she built CrossWorld.
At its core, CrossWorld is a crowdsourced database of international-student-friendly U.S. employers, built by the students who know the hiring process best: international students themselves.
Members contribute real-world experiences about sponsorship, recruiting timelines, interviews, and company-specific hiring practices, creating a resource that's often
difficult to find anywhere else.
The growing online community gives members a place to connect, ask questions, and share what they've learned. But the larger mission is to continuously build and improve the employer database so that every student who contributes helps the next one navigate the job search with a little more confidence.
Success Looks Different
Today, Chance works as a product manager in Atlanta while continuing to grow her online community.
She's careful not to present herself as someone who has everything figured out.
In one of the most honest moments from our conversation, she admitted that some of the hardest parts of being an international student don't disappear simply because you've landed the job.
The uncertainty remains.
The restrictions remain.
The questions about what's next remain.
But so does her willingness to keep building.
Looking back, it's striking how many times Chance chose action over waiting.
She didn't wait for someone else to explain sponsorship.
She didn't wait for a university to create a better resource.
She didn't wait for someone else to build the community she wished existed.
She simply started.
Don't overthink every decision.
Don't wait until everything is perfect.
Start where you are.
Create the Thing You Wish Existed
It's easy to look at someone's social media following and assume that's the story.
It isn't.
The story is what happened before the followers.
A student arrived in a new country looking for guidance and discovered many of the questions she needed answered weren't being discussed openly. Instead of waiting for someone else to solve the problem, she started creating.
First came the videos.
Then the conversations.
Then the community.
She may have had to turn down the brand deals.
But she never stopped building.
And in the process, she created something far more valuable than another successful social media account.
She gave thousands of international students a place to find answers, share experiences, and realize they weren't navigating this journey alone.
Years ago, Chance heard a simple piece of advice:
"If you're going to scroll, you have to create."
She did.
Thousands of international students are glad she did.
Learn More about Chance Lim
View the CrossWorld employer database created by international students
Listen to Chance's podcast interview: An honest conversation about scholarships, internships, burnout, mindset, and finding a job as an international student.