Vietnamese Americans Contending with War and Postwar Legacies

BUI, Duyen is a lecturer at Hawaii Pacific University and a postdoctoral research fellow with the US-Vietnam Research Center at the University of Oregon, Eugene. She received her Ph.D. in political science from the University of Hawai‘i, Mānoa. She engages in scholarship on global politics and how it intersects with social movements, contentious politics, and social justice, particularly in Southeast Asia. Her current research examines the strategies and tactics of transnational activism in the Vietnamese diaspora to analyze how nonstate actors contest for political power against the state. She explores how diasporic communities influence politics in their place of origin through three strategic action fields: homeland politics, long-distance politics, and international politics.  She is a contributing author to the volume entitled, Toward a Framework for Vietnamese American Studies: History, Community, and Memory. Her chapter, called “Diasporic Nationalism: Continuity and Changes,” examines how memory factors into the development of a diasporic nationalism that becomes a tool to resist state oppression.

HOANG, Tuan is Blanche E. Seaver Professor of Humanities and Teacher Education, and associate professor of Great Books at Pepperdine University. His research has focused on the intellectual and religious history in South Vietnam and the post-war diaspora, especially twentieth-century Vietnamese Catholicism. His research has been published in Journal of Vietnamese Studies, American Catholic Studies, and U.S. Catholic Historian, and he has contributed book chapters to eight collected volumes.

HUYNH, Jennifer is an Assistant Professor in the Department of American Studies at the University of Notre Dame. Huynh earned her B.A. from UC Berkeley, and her Ph.D. from Princeton University in Sociology. Before coming to Notre Dame, she worked as a sociology instructor in northeast China and as a lecturer in Asian American Studies at Northwestern University. Huynh’s book, Suburban Refugees: Class, Race, and Resistance in Little Saigon (under contract with University of California Press), examines the experiences of the children of Vietnamese refugees and their parents in Southern California. She is second-generation Vietnamese from Orange County.

NGUYEN, Jenny serves as the Senior Program Assistant for Southeast Asia at the United States Institute of Peace. She is also the President and Board Chair of the National Association for Asian American Professionals, Washington, D.C. and served as the Vice President of the National Organization for Vietnamese American Leadership, Washington, D.C. In 2019, she won the title of Miss VietFest United States and founded Anh Chị Em, a mentorship program for Vietnamese college students in the D.C. metropolitan area. She is currently completing her Master of Arts in International Development Studies at the George Washington University.

NGUYEN, Luong Hai Khoi received his DPhil in Japanese aesthetics from Nihon University, Japan. He is the former head of the literary theory division at Ho Chi Minh City University of Education and a research fellow at Hiroshima University and Johns Hopkins University. He has translated into Vietnamese seven English and Japanese books about Japanese thought and history and has published several articles about Japanese and Vietnamese aesthetic thought and literature. Currently, as managing editor of US-Vietnam Review, an online journal affiliated with the University of Oregon, his research focuses on contemporary Vietnamese issues and the history of Vietnamese republicanism. He is the author of “Early Concepts of the Nation: Trần Trọng Kim and Việt Nam Sử Lược,” in Building a Republican Nation in Postcolonial Vietnam, 1920-1963 (Hawaii, 2022).

NGUYEN, Thi Thuy is a data scientist at The Reason Foundation, a Washington-based think tank, and was an editorial member at US-Vietnam Review, University of Oregon. She holds a Ph.D. in Political Science from University of Oregon, and a Master’s in Public Policy from University of Tokyo, Japan. Her doctoral thesis analyzes the networks of power among the Vietnamese elites. Nguyen’s works have been published in Communist and Post-Communist Studies, Society for Military History Journal, and US-Vietnam Review. She is a co-author of chapters in The Dragon’s Underbelly: Dynamics and Dilemmas in Vietnam’s Economy and Politics (ISEAS, 2023), and in a forthcoming volume of The Cambridge History of the Vietnam War.

NGUYEN, Thien Y is an Assistant Professor in Asian Pacific Studies at California State University, Dominguez Hills. He received his Ph.D. in Sociology from Northwestern University. Professor Nguyen has previously served as the Teaching Fellow in Southeast Asian History at the University of Leeds, UK and a Research Associate for the US-Vietnam Research Center at the University of Oregon. He was also the Resource Development Manager at the Vietnamese-American non-profit Boat People S.O.S. His research focuses on the political history of the Republic of Vietnam, the discursive development of Republican anticommunism, and the connectivity between Vietnamese America and Republican Vietnam. His article “(Re)making the South Vietnamese Past in America” is published in the Journal of Asian American Studies. His article “(Re)Making the South Vietnamese Past in America” is published in the Journal of Asian American Studies. His chapters “When State Propaganda Becomes Social Knowledge” and “Legacies and Diasporic Connectivity: Dialogues and Future Directions of Vietnamese and Vietnamese American Studies” are published, respectively, in Building a Republican Nation in Vietnam, 1920-1963, edited by Nu-Anh Tran and Tuong Vu (University of Hawai’i Press and Columbia University’s Weatherhead Institute, 2022) and Toward a Framework for Vietnamese American Studies: History, Community, and Memory, edited by Linda Ho Peche, Alex-Thai Vo, and Tuong Vu(Temple University Press, 2023). His forthcoming chapter “Understanding the Historical Foundations of Vietnamese American Conservatism” in Politics of Multiracial Conservatism, edited by Daniel Martinez HoSang and Joseph Lowndes (New York University Press), is due to be published in March 2024.

HUONG, Ninh Thien is Professor of Sociology at Cosumnes River College in Sacramento, CA. Her research is on Vietnamese religious diasporas from global and comparative perspectives, focusing on issues around race and gender. Professor Ninh’s research has followed Vietnamese Catholic and Caodai religious networks based in the U.S., Cambodia, Vietnam, Germany, and Israel. She has published or co-published more than 15 peer-reviewed publications on these topics, including a recent paper in the Proceedings of the International AAAI (The Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence) Conference on Web and Social Media. One of Professor Ninh’s current projects examines the roles of Our Lady of Lavang and Our Lady of Guadalupe for community building in Silicon Valley. Another project studies the inter-religious global movements among Caodaists and Daesoon Jinrihoe, new religious movements of Vietnam and Korea. Professor Ninh received her PhD from the University of Southern California.

PECHÉ, Linda Ho is project director for the Vietnamese in the Diaspora Digital Archive, a digital humanities project by The Vietnamese American Heritage Foundation. She co-edited the volume Toward a Framework for Vietnamese American Studies: History, Community, and Memory published by Temple University Press.  

SMALL, Ivan V. is Associate Professor of Anthropology in the Department of Comparative Cultural Studies at the University of Houston. He is author of Currencies of Imagination: Channeling Money and Chasing Mobility in Vietnam (Cornell University Press 2019) and co-editor of Money at the Margins: Global Perspectives on Technology, Financial Inclusion and Design (Berghahn Press 2018). He has written numerous peer reviewed journal articles, book chapters, op-eds and other publications examining infrastructural and social connections between financial, bodily and material mobilities in Vietnam, Southeast Asia and the United States. He has been a fellow at Fulbright University and the University of Social Sciences and Humanities in Ho Chi Minh City Vietnam, the Institute for Money, Technology and Financial Inclusion in Irvine California and the Yusof Ishak Institute for Southeast Asian Studies in Singapore.  

TRAN, Quan is a senior lecturer and senior program coordinator in the Ethnicity, Race, and Migration Program at Yale University. She holds a PhD in American Studies. Dr. Tran’s research and teaching interests include critical refugee studies, Vietnamese diaspora studies, Asian American studies, memory studies, and food studies. Her scholarly publications appear in the Journal of Vietnamese Studies, Amerasia Journal, and the Journal of Southeast Asian American Education & Advancement and in edited volumes including Toward a Framework for Vietnamese American Studies (2023); Refugee Crises, 1945-2000: Political and Societal Responses in International Comparison (2020); and Looking Back on the Vietnam War: Twenty-first Century Perspectives (2016). Her book manuscript, Anchoring Vietnamese Boat People’s History and Memory, examines refugee identity, community, and cultural formations in the Vietnamese diaspora by tracing the late twentieth century Vietnamese boat refugee exodus and contemporary efforts in commemorating that mass migration in Southeast, Western Europe, Australia, North America and cyberspace. Dr. Tran is also a published poet and translator. Her poetry and translations appear in Impermanence: A Chapbook (2020); Troubling Borders: An Anthology of Art and Literature by Southeast Asian Women in the Diaspora (2014); The Ky 21 (2005); and www.damau.org.

TRUONG, Nhu is Assistant Professor in the Department of Politics and Public Affairs at Denison University. She concurrently holds fellowships as a Mansfield-Luce Asia Scholars Network Fellow, a Rosenberg Institute Scholar, and a Center For Khmer Studies Senior Research Fellow. Professor Truong’s research is concerned with the repression-responsiveness of autocracies and democracies, social movements, political economy of development, state formation, and political legitimacy in Southeast and Northeast Asia, particularly Vietnam, China, and Cambodia. Her work has appeared in the Journal of East Asian Studies, Problems of Post- Communism, edited books, and policy studies. Her most recent publication includes the co-edited volume The Dragon’s Underbelly: Dynamics and Dilemmas of Vietnam’s Economy and Politics (ISEAS, 2023). Previously, Professor Truong was a Postdoctoral Associate with the Council on Southeast Asian Studies at Yale University, a Shorenstein Postdoctoral Fellow at Stanford University, a Young Southeast Asia Fellow selected by the Southeast Asia Research Group, and a New Faces in China Studies Conference Fellow held at Duke University. She completed an MPA at the NYU Wagner Graduate School of Public Service, an M.A. in Asian Studies at the University of Texas at Austin, and her Ph.D. from McGill University.  

VO, Alex-Thai Dinh is Assistant Research Professor at the Vietnam Center & Archive (VNCA), Texas Tech University. He is a historian of modern Vietnam and East and Southeast Asia, specializing in Cold War politics and the Vietnam Wars. He examines the social, cultural, political, and economic transformations in Vietnam, including issues such as mass mobilization, social control, cultural politics, postwar consequences and diaspora, and war legacies and memories. He oversees the VNCA Vietnam War MIAs and Legacies Research Project and the VNCA Vietnamese Oral History Project. He formerly served as a historian with the U.S. Defense POW/MIA Agency and a research scholar with the U.S.-Vietnam Center at the University of Oregon. He is the co-editor of Toward a Framework for Vietnamese American Studies: History, Community, and Memory (Temple University Press). He is published and interviewed by various news agencies, including Voice of America, Radio Free Asia, and the BBC. His scholarship and public-serving works aim at bridging the gap between academia and the public. He holds a Ph.D. in history from Cornell University. 

VO DANG, Thuy is Assistant Professor of Information Studies at UCLA where she co-directs the Community Archives Lab. She holds a Ph.D. in Ethnic Studies from the University of California, San Diego and a B.A. in English and Asian American Studies from Scripps College. Her previous role was Curator for the UCI Libraries Southeast Asian Archive and Research Librarian for Asian American Studies. With research and teaching expertise in oral history, Southeast Asian diaspora, community archives, and cultural memory, Thuy brings an interdisciplinary approach to co-creating digital humanities and archival documentation projects with educators and community-based organizations. Her current research and community engagement work center “refugee archival praxis” through the storytelling strategies of first and second generation Vietnamese in the diaspora. She is coauthor of the books A People’s Guide to Orange County (2022) and Vietnamese in Orange County (2015) and has published in Amerasia Journal, Journal of Asian American Studies, AAPI Nexus: Policy, Practice and Community, Health Promotion Practice, History Now: the Journal, Ethnic Studies in Academic and Research Libraries, and Toward a Framework for Vietnamese American Studies. Thuy serves on the board of directors for Arts Orange County and the Vietnamese American Arts & Letters Association.

VU, Tuong is Professor of Political Science and Director of the US-Vietnam Research Center at the University of Oregon. He has held visiting appointments at Princeton University and National University of Singapore and taught at the Naval Postgraduate School. Vu is the author or co-editor of many books, the most recent of which include Republican Vietnam, 1963-1975: War, Society, Diaspora (Hawaii, 2023); Toward a Framework of Vietnamese American Studies: History, Community, and Memory (Temple, 2023); The Dragon’s Underbelly: Dynamics and Dilemmas of Vietnam’s Economy and Politics (ISEAS, 2023); Building a Republican Nation in Postcolonial Vietnam, 1920-1963 (Hawaii, 2022); The Republic of Vietnam, 1955-1975: Vietnamese Perspectives on Nation-Building (Cornell, 2020); and Vietnam’s Communist Revolution: The Power and Limits of Ideology (Cambridge, 2017). He has also authored numerous articles on the politics of nationalism, revolution, and state-building in East and Southeast Asia.

MCKELVEY, Robert has been in psychiatric practice for 44 years and is board certified in both adult and child psychiatry. He is a Distinguished Life Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association and of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, and a Fellow of the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatry and an Accredited member of their Faculty of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry. Robert graduated from Dartmouth Medical School in 1974, completed his psychiatry residency at Cambridge Hospital/Harvard Medical School in 1977, and his child psychiatry fellowship training at McLean Hospital/Harvard Medical School. He has served on the faculties of Harvard Medical School, Baylor College of Medicine, the University of Western Australia, and Oregon Health and Science University, and has directed the Divisions of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry at both Baylor and OHSU. He is presently Emeritus Professor in Psychiatry at Oregon Health and Science University and in private practice. His academic interests include cross-cultural psychiatry involving refugee populations from Vietnam, and physicians and nurses coping with the deaths of child patients. He has published numerous peer reviewed articles and three books, The Dust of Life: America’s Abandonment of Its Children in Vietnam; A Gift of Barbed Wire: America’s Abandonment of Its Allies in South Vietnam; and When a Child Dies: How Pediatric Physicians and Nurses Cope. His clinical interests include the assessment of complex child, adolescent, and adult psychiatric problems, psychopharmacology, and psychoanalytically oriented psychotherapy. Prior to entering medical school, he served as a Captain in the US Marine Corps in Vietnam and was awarded the Bronze Star with Combat V.

VUONG, Quyen is Co-founder and Executive Director of the International Children Assistance Network (ICAN), a leading Vietnamese American nonprofit agency serving Vietnamese children and families in Santa Clara County. Under her leadership, ICAN has successfully implemented culturally responsive community outreach and education programs to address controversial issues such as child abuse/neglect, domestic violence, gender-based violence, and mental health in the Vietnamese community. In 1989 Ms. Vuong received the Fulbright Fellowship to work in the Vietnamese refugee camps in Hong Kong, and later went on a fact-finding trip sponsored by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees to monitor the safety and reintegration of returnees sent back to Vietnam. In 2012, Ms. Vuong was appointed by President Obama to serve on the Board of Trustees of the Vietnam Education Foundation, a US federal nonprofit agency with the mission to improve bilateral relationship between the two countries through educational exchange in STEM fields. Ms. Vuong completed a BA in Economics at Yale University and an MBA from Stanford Graduate School of Business. She received her Master of Social Work at San Jose State University with special focus on Mental Health and is currently working on becoming a Licensed Clinical Social Worker. 

THANH, Jacqueline, Ph.D., is a scholar-activist with an extensive history in advocacy and leadership development. She is a clinically trained, trauma informed human rights advocate who brings expertise in culturally integrative design justice. A first-generation college graduate–she holds a B.A. in English from the University of California, Berkeley, a Master of Social Work and Global Health Administration and Policy Certification from the University of Chicago, Doctorate in Social Work from the University of Southern California. She is an inaugural Harvard Climate Design Justice Fellow, New Orleans Business’s 2023 Top Female Achievers, and Gambits 2022 40 under 40 honoree. Her work has centered an Asian American praxis in intersectional changemaking through program development and implementation with survivors of war, trafficking, violence against women, migrant displacement trauma domestically and abroad. She is currently Executive Director of VAYLA New Orleans where she leads strategic initiatives in achieving equal opportunity and justice through storytelling and innovating pathways for Asian American leadership in New Orleans and the Gulf South.

NGUYEN, Thanh Thuy was born in 1943 in Mỹ Tho, South Vietnam. She attended the Saigon School of Pharmacy in 1962–1963 and the University of Dalat in 1964–1965. Mrs. Nguyễn Thanh Thủy began her career in law enforcement after graduating from the 1st Officer Training Course of the National Police Academy in 1966. She then served in the Special Police Research Department under the General Staff of the National Police in 1967. Later, she became the Commander of the Thiên Nga Intelligence Team and taught in the Intelligence Training Course for the Thiên Nga Team. She reached the rank of Major in the Special Police Force, serving as the Commander of the Thiên Nga Intelligence Team until April 1975. Following the fall of Saigon, Mrs. Nguyễn Thanh Thủy endured 13 years of hardship in communist re-education camps, including twice at Long Thành re-education camp, Thủ Đức prison, Z 4 prison, and twice at Z 30 D re-education camp. She was released in February 1988. In November 1992, she immigrated to California via the H.O. program. Over the years, she dedicated herself to humanitarian work as a volunteer for the Association of Former Prisoners for the Assistance of Disabled Veterans and Widows of the Republic of Vietnam, specifically overseeing cases on RVN widows and assisting Vietnamese veterans. In 2018, she was elected as the Association’s President, a position she has held since, working tirelessly to improve the lives of Vietnamese veterans and their families along with serving the Vietnamese community in Southern California. 

THOMAS, Sabrina is an Associate Professor of African American History and War and Society at Texas Tech University. Her research takes a transnational approach to the intersections of race, nation, and war and examines questions of citizenship, identity, and diaspora through the legacies of children born from international conflict. Her first book, Scars of War: The Politics of Paternity and Responsibility for the Amerasians of Vietnam, (University of Nebraska Press, 2021) considered the issue of U.S. citizenship for the Amerasian children of Vietnam. Scars of War was awarded the2021 “Best First Book” prize from Phi Alpha Theta History Honor Society and was nominated for the Bancroft Prize. Dr. Thomas is the author of numerous articles including “Blood Politics: Reproducing the Children of ‘Others’ in the 1982 Amerasian Immigration Act” published in the Journal of American-East Asian Relations (2019), and “When War Creates Life: Race, Nation, and Belonging for Children Born from War,” to the Cambridge History of War and Society in America (2024). She is currently working on her second book, The Soul of Blood and Borders: Brown Babies, Black Amerasians, and the African American Response. Prior to Texas Tech University, Dr. Thomas was an Associate Professor and the David A. Moore Chair of American History at Wabash College. She earned a B.A. in History from Colorado State University, M.S. in Counseling from Butler University, and Ph.D. in History from Arizona State University. Her recent interview on the podcast, Military Historians are People Too, is now available on Apple podcasts.

NGUYEN, Dac Thanh is Founder and President of Vietnamese American Foundation (VAF). He is a former Major of the Army of the Republic of Vietnam, graduating from the 12th class of the Thu Duc Army Infantry School and 8th class Armored. He graduated from the “Bo Binh Cao Cap” class. He was Director of T.O.C of Chau Doc Province. In April of 1975, he was detained in re-education camps for 9 years and 5 months. Mr. Nguyen and his family settled in the US under the H.O. Program in1990. He was financially sponsored by the State of Texas to study as a paralegal. He graduated in March 1996, worked for Brazos Law Office, and retired in 2007. In January of 2007, Mr. Nguyen went to Vietnam to ask the Vietnam Government for permission to find the graves of Republic of Vietnam soldiers and help relatives rebury their loved one’s remains, and to renovate to Bien Hoa National Military Cemetery. Mr. Nguyen has been supported by the US Embassy and Vietnam’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The US Embassy introduced and made an appointment for Mr. Nguyen to meet Mr. Matthew Palmer, U.S. Deputy Secretary of State for Southeast Asia and the Pacific, and Senator Jim Webb. Both of them support VAF. Mr. Nguyen has also received support from Ambassador to Vietnam Daniel Kritenberk, Congressman Lowenthal and 20 additional members of Congress, Senator John Cornyn, and Assistant Secretary of Defense Dr. Peter R. Lavoy.

WELLS-DANG, Andrew is a senior expert on Southeast Asia and leads the Vietnam War Legacies and Reconciliation Initiative at the U.S. Institute of Peace in Washington, DC, a national, nonpartisan institute founded by Congress to prevent, mitigate, and resolve violent conflict. Dr. Wells-Dang lived in Vietnam from 1997 to 2019 as a representative and advisor to international NGOs including Catholic Relief Services and Oxfam. He is the author of Civil Society Networks in China and Vietnam: Informal Pathbreakers in Health and the Environment (Palgrave, 2012) and numerous journal articles and policy reports on war legacies, U.S.-Vietnam relations, civil society, land rights and governance. He holds a PhD in political science from the University of Birmingham, UK and an M.A. in international development and economics from the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies in Washington DC. He is fluent in Vietnamese and proficient in Mandarin Chinese, French, and German.  

NGUYEN, Destiny works in investment and banking. She became an activist for the Vietnamese American community for the past fifteen years, specifically in the preservation efforts of restoring the honors and respects for the Vietnamese ARVN and Americans service members who fought side by side against the communist during the Vietnam War. As the original founder of The Republic of Vietnam Next Generation, her leadership, along with the co-founders of the organization, has created a lasting and meaningful organization with membership nationwide. In addition to her leadership roles in these associations. Ms. Nguyen is also a member of the Executive Board for the May 11 Vietnam Human Right Day – an organization that commemorates the Resolution for Vietnam Human Rights that was signed by President Bill Clinton in 1994. She is well recognized nationally for being a freelance reporter for VATV, SBTN some of the most popular news service agencies for Vietnamese abroad. Currently, Ms. Nguyen is also the President of the Vietnamese American Community of Central Virginia. Her responsibilities include organizing Vietnamese traditional events and being a liaison person between different generations of Vietnamese Americans in the community. 

TRINH, Hoi is a trained lawyer and civil society activist. The only son of a Vietnamese refugee who was sent to re-education camps before escaping by boat to neighboring Thailand (and eventual resettlement in Australia), Hoi grew up in Vietnam until the age of 14 where his family, like many others, was persecuted by the new government following the fall of Saigon in 1975. After graduating from Melbourne University Law School in 1995 and completing his Master of Studies at Oxford University in 2002, Hoi decided to return to his homeland to help rebuild the country. Unfortunately, his repatriation did not go as planned. Interrogated for the next 6 months, and it wasn’t until late 2008 when Hoi was finally allowed to leave, but not to return to his homeland ever since. Consequently, Hoi joined VOICE (‘Vietnamese Overseas Initiative for Conscience Empowerment’), a 501(c)(3) Hoi co-founded a year earlier, as its Executive Director for the next 10 years. During this time, VOICE grew as a regional NGO working in Southeast Asia to provide legal assistance for refugees and help develop independent civil society in Vietnam by training and providing legal, financial, and logistical support to human rights defenders from Vietnam and elsewhere in the region. For his human rights work, Hoi was given the Young Vietnamese Australian of the Year Award in 1998. In 1999, Hoi was given an Honorable Mention at the Young Australian Lawyer of the Year Awards by the Law Council of Australia. A year later, the Sydney Olympic Organizing Committee selected him to be one of the torch-bearers for the 2000 Sydney Olympics. In 2001, the Oxford-Australia Scholarships Committee awarded him the Chevening Oxford-Australia Scholarship. In 2015, Hoi received a grant from the US Government to complete an online course at Harvard Kennedy School entitled ‘Leading Nonviolent Movements for Social Progress’. In 2017, Hoi completed his Draper-Hill Summer Fellowship at Stanford. Hoi currently resides in Orange County, California with his family. 

TRAN, Trung Dao is the pen name of Nhon Tran, a Vietnamese poet and author. Between 1972 and 1975, he majored in Economics at Van Hanh University in Saigon. In 1981, he fled Vietnam seeking freedom as a ‘boat people’. After a short time living in the Palawan refugee camp, he settled in Boston, Massachusetts, USA in November 1981.After a short period of study at the University of Massachusetts at Boston, he studied computer science at the Wentworth Institute of Technology and graduated with a Bachelor in Computer Science. He continued to study Management of Information Systems at Boston University. From 1990, he was a senior computer system engineer and administrated the computer network of the northeastern region for Sun Microsystems Incorporation. From 1994 until his retirement in 2018, he technically led database operation teams in different roles for Fidelity Investments Company in Boston. As an author, he intensively wrote and published 14 books in the Vietnamese language. He has been invited to give speeches in the fields of human rights, community building, and youth at conferences, seminars, and youth camps in the US, Europe and Asia.

KIEU, Quynh is a board-certified pediatrician with a medical degree from Saigon Medical School, class of 1975. She completed her residency and fellowship at the University of California Irvine in 1979. Since then, she has been serving the families of Orange County with compassion and expertise. She is also a passionate advocate for the rights of refugees, and successfully initiated and lobbied for the passage of SB 1358, a bill that allows refugee doctors to obtain a certificate in lieu of diploma and practice medicine in California. She is also the founder and president of Project Vietnam Foundation, a non-profit organization that provides life-changing surgeries to children with birth defects, such as cleft lip and palate, in Vietnam for 27 years. The foundation also offers medical and dental/vision care to over 100,000 needy people in rural areas and trains local health workers to improve the quality of pediatric care in Vietnam, such as Neonatal Resuscitation and now early identification and intervention for children with development delays and autism. During the pandemic Project Vietnam offered serology diagnosis for Covid and free vaccine as well as service for quarantined patients in Orange County. It continues to collaborate with UCI on public health and the Unidentified Diseases Network. Dr. Kieu has been recognized with numerous awards for her outstanding contributions to medicine and humanitarian work. She received the “Pride of the profession” award from the American Medical Association, the highest honor given by the organization. She was also honored by the American Academy of Pediatrics, the Red Cross, and nominated “woman of the year” by the California Senate. In addition, she has been educating the public through Vietnamese media on various topics related to health and pediatrics for the last 15 years.

TRUONG, Vân has over 30 years of teaching and learning. For half of her distinguished career, Dr. Truong was a middle and high school principal as PPS Assistant Superintendent of Teaching and Learning of Portland Public Schools, the largest school district in Oregon. Dr. Truong has hired, trained, coached, supervised, and managed all different positions in the district, including administrative/business staff, teachers, principals, and central office executive administrators. Currently, she is mentoring teachers and administrators at Oregon State University and Portland State University. She is a consultant for Lewis & Clark College, Watzek Library, Special Collection, and Archives along with other educational organizations through her consultant business, International Youth Leaders. Dr. Truong also spent her time volunteering in nonprofit organizations as a board member, including Social Venture Partners of Oregon and the Vietnamese Dual Language HPH parent group. In addition, Dr. Truong has cofounded the Oregon Vietnamese Economic, Education, and Culture Association (OVEECA), a registered non-profit association, to provide leadership and support to foster and sustain cultural, linguistic, and economic relationships between the Vietnamese people and Oregonians. Dr. Truong’s dedication to education and non-profit organizations is her commitment to providing an excellent education to students. She is fluent in Vietnamese, French, and English. 

LE, Ysa began her art activism with the Vietnamese American Arts & Letters Association (VAALA)in 2000, serving as the Board President from 2004-2008, and then as Executive Director from2008 until now. She co-founded Viet Film Fest in 2003. Prior to VAALA, Ysa was a radio host for the Viet Nam California Radio (VNCR), from 1995 to 2010. She hosted a weekly show called “Vòng Chân Trời Văn Học Nghệ Thuật” (“The Art Horizon”), which covered interviews with various artists and art events. Her show was syndicated for Voice of America (VOA), which broadcasted in Vietnam. In 2005, Ysa was chosen by the Orange County Register as one of the “30 Vietnamese Americans to Watch” in celebration of the 30th anniversary of the Vietnamese American community in the United States. She received the Arts and Culture (In-Language) Award from New California Media in 2003 for her article on Mimi News, reporting the revival of the traditional performance art Cải Lương in the Vietnamese community. She was awarded with the “Service Award” from the USC (University of Southern California) Asian Pacific Alumni Association in 2012. Ysa received her Doctor of Pharmacy (Pharm.D.) degree from the University of Southern California (USC) in 1994. She currently works as a clinical pharmacist at Providence Home Infusion Pharmacy in Anaheim, California. 

NGUYEN, Joseph is a lecturer in the department of Asian American Studies at the California State University Fullerton. In addition, he is also pursuing a teaching credential in order to develop and teach Science, Social Science, Ethnic Studies, and Vietnamese American studies at one of the only Vietnamese dual language immersion programs in California. Joseph completed a double B.A. in Asian Languages & Linguistics and Human Biology and Society, as well as an M.A. in Vietnamese Studies in the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures at Columbia University. Joseph’s thesis is entitled, “Bắc Di Cư in the Diaspora: Mapping a Vietnamese Catholic Refugee Identity,” which is a social history that examines the transformation of collective identity of Northern Catholics who migrated to the South in 1954 and escaped Vietnam after 1975. For the past two years, Joseph has been a curriculum writer for the Vietnamese American Refugee Experience Model Curriculum (VAREMC) under the Orange County Department of Education, which hopes to create a model curriculum for the Vietnamese American experience to help fulfill the mandatory ethnic studies at all high schools in the state of California. Joseph is also a board member and helps lead the Digital Archive project for the Vietnamese Heritage Museum, which is currently based in Garden Grove, CA. Recent awards include a Fulbright fellowship in Vietnam in the year of 2022-2023. 

GONZALEZ, Elwing Suong is a public school and community college educator and is a historian looking at U.S. immigration and refugee history and urban history, with a focus on Los Angeles.  She has published work on Vietnamese refugee settlement in Los Angeles and ethnic enclave development and is currently working on examining broader refugee settlement and community development in Los Angeles in the 1970s and 1980s.  She received her M.A. in History from Cal State Los Angeles and her Ph.D. in History from Claremont Graduate University.  She is also an artist and mother.

NGUYEN, Diedre Thu-Ha is a public servant, scientist, and community organizer. She is a laboratory cancer scientist, a California Lawyer Assistance Program Oversight Committee member appointed by the California Speaker of Assembly, a former Garden Grove City Councilmember, Mayor Pro Tem, wife, and mother of three active sons. She received her B.S. degree in Biological Sciences from the University of California, Irvine, and her M.S. degree in Clinical Genetics from California State University, Dominguez Hills. She holds two Clinical Laboratory Professional Licenses in California. Diedre Thu-Ha Nguyen has worked as a Clinical Genetic Molecular Biologist Scientist and Clinical Cytogeneticist for Quest Diagnostic Inc. for the past 24 years. As a Garden Grove Councilmember, Diedre has helped develop and deliver policies to navigate her community through the COVID-19 pandemic. She has developed strong ties with her community since childhood. She has weekly talk shows on local ethnic media, including TV stations, providing insight, educating viewers on civic engagement, social issues, and championing access to affordable housing for underserved communities. Even after her role in elected office, she has rigorously maintained her engagement with the local communities and local governments. 

NGUYEN, Daniel is a son of Vietnamese refugees who came to the United States in 1975. He was born and raised in Camas, Washington. Daniel and his wife, with their entrepreneurial spirit, founded and operate Bambuza Vietnam Kitchen, located in the South Waterfront community since 2008. He was elected to the Lake Oswego City Council in 2018, the first person of color elected to serve on City Council. He currently represents SW Portland and Lake Oswego as State Representative. Daniel also serves as a community volunteer as a Director on several organizations boards-Immigration Counseling Service Business for a Better Portland and Co-Chair of PCC School of Business & Entrepreneurship Advisory Committee.

TRAN, Thuy N. D. is an independent curator and art historian, specializing in modern and contemporary art with a focus on Asia and its diaspora. Her extensive work as an academic, community activist, and contributing scholar has been dedicated to shifting marginalized narratives to the forefront of art history. Her areas of interest include postcolonial modernism, curatorial practices, and identity politics. Tran’s work centers on empowering the AAPI community through art exhibitions and programming. She has been honored with multiple fellowships, including the Steve and Barbara Mendell Graduate Fellowship in Cultural Literacy, the Claudia Weitlanner Fellowship, and the Eugene Cota-Robles Fellowship. She has taught a variety of art history courses at Arizona State University, UC Santa Barbara, Mt. San Antonio College and Golden West College. She has given invited lectures at the Wende Museum, UC Los Angeles, UC Santa Barbara, and UC Irvine. Her museum experience includes the USC Pacific Asia Museum, the Hammer Museum, Phoenix Art Museum and was the Murray Roman Curatorial Fellow for the Art, Design and Architecture Museum.

NGUYEN, Kelly is an Assistant Professor of Classics at UCLA and is a member of the inaugural cohort of the UCLA Mellon Data / Social Justice Curriculum Initiative. She received her Ph.D. in Ancient History from Brown University and her B.A. in Classics and Archaeology from Stanford University. She was a University of California Presidential Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Rhetoric at UC – Berkeley, and most recently, she was an inaugural IDEAL Provostial Postdoctoral Fellow for studies in race and ethnicity at Stanford University. Her research and teaching engages Greco-Roman classical antiquity in a comparative manner to explore histories of empires, forced displacement, and race and ethnicity in a global context. Her current book manuscript is the first major project to explore how Vietnamese intellectuals—both national and diasporic, from the French colonization era to contemporary times—have engaged with the Greco-Roman classical tradition in their fight for liberation. She is also working on an exciting new community-engaged project that aims to build a transhistorical and trans-spatial digital archive of refugee art and artifacts (from antiquity to today). The initial phase of this project was in collaboration with the Việt Museum in San Jose and was funded by Stanford’s Center for Spatial and Textual Analysis (CESTA). At UCLA, she plans to expand this project by collaborating with refugee communities in Los Angeles, as well as throughout Southern California more generally.   

CHAU, Thuy is the president of the Vietnamese Heritage Museum. An engineer by training with more than 35 years of experience, he is an artist and author of a novel about boat people and books about calligraphy. His artworks were exhibited at SOKA University, California State University, Fullerton, California State University, Dominguez Hills, USC Pacific Asia Museum, and Orange County Center for Contemporary Art. His most recognized artwork, Viet, was exhibited at the Sacramento Capitol. Chau Thuy is a survivor of a dramatic boat escape from Vietnam to Thailand. His extraordinary journey as a refugee determined his unique appreciation for life and freedom. As an act of homage to all Vietnamese Boat People, he decided to dedicate his life to educating the public and raising awareness about their unimaginable tragedy.  

PHAN, Quang Trong is a retired United States Air Force (USAF) Chief Engineer for the Personnel Systems Division. During his 34 years with the Department of Defense, he oversaw technical support for $10.3 million promotion board automation-the largest force management modernization in 20 years. He also led platform migration and technology pathfinder for USAF wide fitness management program and directed technology roadmap development for the USAF Human Resources (HR) domain values over $500 million in information and technology assets. The technology roadmap is utilized to modernize and develop future state-of-the-art personnel systems. He graduated from the USAF War College, Command and Staff College, and Squadron Officer’s School. He received his MS in Systems Engineering and MBA in Business Administration from St. Mary’s University, MA in Computer Resource Management from Webster University, MS in Interdisciplinary Studies from Texas State University, and PhD in Applied Management and Decision Science from Walden University. Trong was a recipient of the USAF Material Command Science and Engineering Career Achievement Award, City of San Antonio Leadership in Profile Award, and USAF Civilian Achievement Medal for his technical and community service contribution. Trong is currently the President of the Board of Vietnamese American Community of the USA. He serves as an adjunct professor at Dallas College and University of Texas at Dallas. He is a regular commentator on Radio Saigon and Saigon Broadcast Television Network. Trong co-founds One Bread–a homeless ministry and Advocates for Faith and Justice in Vietnam–a champion for freedom of religion. Trong lives in Texas with his wife, My-Loan, and their three children.

VO, Thanh Nhan is the Executive Producer of Vietnamese American Television and a Director for the Cao Dai Foundation. The Cao Dai Foundation aims to provide funding to help build temples throughout the country and hold training workshops for youth in Cao Dai. Mr. Vo formerly served as the Chairman of the International Central Committee for Vietnamese Scouting (ICCVS), and a Computer Specialist for the Bureau of Labor Statistics. In 1980, Mr. Vo immigrated to the DC Metropolitan area where he has been constantly involved in building up the Vietnamese American community through Vietnamese American scouting, community television, and organizing various youth programs. As Chairman of ICCVS from 2006 to 2018, Mr. Vo helped to bridge the cultural gap between Vietnamese, American, and world scouting movements. Mr. Vo’s involvement in community television has led his travels across the world from the Philippines following Typhoon Haiyan to Louisiana after the Deep Water Horizon Oil Spill. He additionally founded programs in the DMV area geared towards Vietnamese American youth such as SATonSat and Youth in Media. As a University of Maryland alum, Mr. Vo is excited to see more of the Oregon Ducks in the Big Ten in the future.  

NGO, Lam Quynh, MD, retired as a family physician after 34 years of practice in Seattle, WA. He completed a degree in Bachelor of Sciences at Texas Tech University in Lubbock, TX, and a Medical Doctor degree at Baylor Medical School in Houston, TX. Dr. Ngo has served as head of the local chapter of the Buddhist Youth Organization of the United States of America under the Unified Buddhist Church of Vietnam in Seattle since 1998, and as head of the National Leadership Council since 2019.  

TRUITT, Allison is a professor of anthropology at Tulane University in New Orleans, Louisiana USA. She received her Ph.D. from Cornell University and then completed a postdoctoral fellowship at NYU. Since then, Professor Truitt has focused on the manifold ways in which people reckon with the afterlife of war on both sides of the Pacific Ocean whether through handling multiple forms of money or carrying out religious rituals. She is author of two books, Dreaming of Money in Ho Chi Minh City (U of Washington 2013) and Pure Land in the Making: Vietnamese Buddhism in the US Gulf South (U of Washington 2021) as well as numerous articles on objects of value in circulation including motorbikes and bars of gold. She is currently a faculty mentor in the Mellon Graduate Program in Community-Engaged Scholarship as well as director of the Asian Studies Program at Tulane. Finally, she has partnered with several Vietnamese community organizations in New Orleans in her teaching. 

NGUYEN, Philip is the Executive Director of the Vietnamese American Roundtable (VAR), a nonprofit organization committed to educating, mobilizing, and advocating for the Vietnamese American community in San Jose towards a better quality of life for all. After graduating from UC Berkeley with B.A. degrees in Ethnic Studies and Asian American and Asian Diaspora Studies, he earned his M.A. degree in Asian American Studies from the College of Ethnic Studies at San Francisco State University, where he teaches courses on Vietnamese American Literature and the History of the Vietnamese in the US. He has been involved with community-based organizations dedicated to amplifying and uplifting Asian American, Southeast Asian American, and Vietnamese American voices through his involvement with the Diasporic Vietnamese Artists Network, the Progressive Vietnamese American Organization, and the Union of North American Vietnamese Student Associations.  

LÊ, Adrienne Minh-Châu is a Ph.D. candidate in international history at Columbia University focusing on Vietnam and the United States in the twentieth century. Her research examines the southern Vietnamese Buddhist movement in the context of decolonization and the Cold War. Adrienne received her BA in History from Yale University, where she was awarded a department prize for her thesis on changing ideas of Vietnamese femininity, morality, and patriotism during the French colonial era. Before starting her doctoral studies at Columbia, she worked for four years as a digital campaigner and nonprofit strategy consultant in New York City, collaborating with a range of organizations on refugee resettlement, women’s rights, gun reform, creative technology, and civic participation. Adrienne’s work has been supported by the Paul & Daisy Soros Fellowship for New Americans and the Weatherhead East Asian Institute. She is a contributing author in Republican Vietnam, 1963-1975: War, Society, Diaspora (University of Hawai’i Press, 2023) and the forthcoming Cambridge History of the Vietnam War (Cambridge University Press, 2024).  

TRAN, Vincent is the Organizing Director and co-founder of VietRISE. Vincent oversees VietRISE’s community outreach, civic empowerment & youth programs, and research efforts. He co-leads the Santa Ana Families for Fair Elections coalition, which aims to expand suffrage to noncitizens in Santa Ana and California. He served as lead project coordinator for VietRISE’s2020-2022 Census outreach and Redistricting policy work, which engaged over 6,000 Little Saigon residents in the census and redistricting processes and resulted in key changes made by local and state government jurisdictions. In 2021, he helped organize with Vietnamese senior mobile home residents to advance the successful passage of the first rent control law in Orange County. Vincent earned a BA in Political Science from UC Berkeley and currently serves as a Research Consultant and Curriculum Writer for the State of California’s Vietnamese American Refugee Experience Model Curriculum.