Our Team

Dr. Nguyen has more than 30 years of experience in non-profit sector and 25 years of experience in leadership development, project, program and portfolio management and consulting. Dr. Nguyen believes the future is in the hands of the young. Her accomplishments include the establishment of the Vietnamese Youth Center of Toronto, Canada; the National Youth Leadership Development Camp “Len Duong” for young community activists from across USA and Canada; and the hosting of numerous community programs aimed at developing Asian-American youths and young adults. Dr. Nguyen is currently the Co-Chairwoman of the Board of Directors of Vietnamese Culture and Science Association (www.vcsa.org). In 2012, she was appointed by President Barack Obama to serve on the Board of Vietnam Education Foundation (www.vef.gov), a national foundation established by US government to foster the relationship between United States and Vietnam through education. In 2014, she was the elected Board Chair and she served this role until the last board term in 2016. The foundation established a strong bridge between USA and Vietnam through educational exchange and scientific research collaboration initiatives and helped to train 600+ Ph.D. and Masters’ students in Science and Technology, Mathematics and Environmental Science.
Dr. Nguyen has received numerous awards and recognitions including “Top 30 Influential Women of Houston” Award by D-MAR communication; and “Americanism Medal” by The Honor Society of Daughters of American Revolution (DAR) in 2017; “Top 25 Women in Houston” award by Comerica Bank and Steed Society in 2010; “Asian American Heritage Award in Science and Technology” by Asian Heritage Society in San Diego, California in 2013; “Texas Women’s Leadership Empowerment” by Texas Women Empowerment Foundation in 2011.
Dr. Nguyen graduated Summa-Cum-Laude with a Bachelor of Science degree in Computer Science in 1989 and received a master’s in Computer Science from the University of Toronto, Canada, in 1993. She attained her Doctoral Degree in Business Administration specialized in Project Management from Northcentral University in 2015. Her doctoral thesis title was “Relationship between IT Project Managers’ Emotional Intelligence and their Project Success”. Beside her life-long non-profit work, Dr. Nguyen is also a seasoned IT Portfolio Management professional with a PMP Certification and 25 years of IT project, program and portfolio management experience. She served as the IT Portfolio Manager at MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, Texas for 14 years before transitioning full-time to non-profit and education sector.

Dr. Truong Nong is an educator, an adjunct professor, an author, and a community activist with more than 25 years of experience. He also serves as a leadership trainer in the past ten years. In the past 25 years, Dr. Nong has been involved in community building, working with youth groups as a counselor and leadership trainer. Being a high school teacher for 14 years at DeBakey High School for Health Professions, Dr. Nong knows firsthand the impact of education. He earned a Bachelor of Science in Mathematics, a Master’s of Arts in Political Science, and a Ph.D in Education in 2012. Dr. Nong has been teaching Vietnamese language and Vietnamese Studies at the University of Houston in the past 5 years. He has spoken at several conferences on the topic of “Civil Society”, “Vietnam war” and translated 3 books into Vietnamese: “Politics” by Aristotle, “Common Sense” by Thomas Paine, and “The second treatise of Government” by John Locke.
In 1990, he was one of the founders of the Vietnamese American Youth Organization (VAYO) in Houston, TX. Currently, he serves as Advisory Board Member of the Vietnamese Culture and Science Association (VCSA), a national Vietnamese American organization based in Houston, Texas. In this capacity, he has designed and delivered a number of workshops in leadership development for VCSA’s annual youth leadership camps for the past ten years, as well as designed and taught Vietnamese history and literature courses for the past twelve years. He also served on the first Advisory Board of Sun Flower Missions, a non-profit organization dedicated to improving the lives of people in Vietnam through educational assistance programs.
In 2005, he left his teaching position at Michael DeBakey High School to pursue his dream: to establish the Institute for Civic Education in Vietnam (www.icevn.org), a non-profit organization. ICEVN’s mission is to promote social responsibilities and transparency in Vietnam by providing civic education, entrepreneurship education, and managerial leadership development in Vietnam. ICEVN provides on-line educational classes on civic education, business management and leadership development, and aims to build an on-line library of approximately 100 translated books in humanity and social sciences to share the knowledge to the people in Vietnam.
In 2016, he was honored by the Asian Heritage Society of San Diego, California with the Global Outreach Award for his work with the Institute of Civic Education in Vietnam that reached out to the audience in 140 countries around the globe.

Dr. KimOanh Nguyen-Lam serves as the Program Director and Senior Policy Advisor for the Office of English Language Acquisition and is the liaison between OELA and White House Initiative on Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders. She joined the U.S. Department of Education in 2011 as the Director of the Advanced Training and Research Division of the International and Foreign Language Education (IFLE), Office of Postsecondary Education. In this capacity, she provided leadership and administrative oversight on ten domestic and four overseas international education grant programs under the Title VI legislation of the U.S. Higher Education Act of 1965 (as amended) and the Fulbright-Hays Act of 1961.
Prior to joining the U.S. Department of Education, Dr. Nguyen-Lam was the Executive Director of the California State University 23-campus System-wide Strategic Language Initiative (SLI) to promote college students’ advanced proficiency in Arabic, Mandarin, Korean, Persian, and Russian through an interdisciplinary curriculum on campus and abroad. She was instrumental in establishing the LA-Basin Consortia Teacher Credential Program, a 6-campus collaboration to prepare bilingual teachers in Cantonese, Mandarin, Khmer, Korean, Pilipino, and Vietnamese languages. Dr. Nguyen-Lam was a CSU faculty in world language instruction, teacher education, and multicultural education. From 1993-2006, she was the Associate Director of the Center for Language Minority Education and Research. Her K-12 experience (1980-1993) in education and education leadership includes being a bilingual teacher, professional development specialist, district administrator, California Teacher Credential Commission Committee member, and California P-16 Advisory Committee member. She served on the advisory boards of a number of community-based organizations and was an elected school board member (2004-2011) of Garden Grove Unified, a K-12 Title I school district where over 80% of the students were English Learners.
Dr. Nguyen-Lam holds a B.A. in Psychology, a M.S. in Educational Psychology, and a Ph.D. in Integral Studies. She was the co-editor for the Southeast Asian Studies Journal and served on the international editorial review board of the International Multilingual Research Education Journal. She received a Congressional Service Award in 2004 and 2006, and was nominated for the Minerva – California Women Who Made a Difference Award in 2004. She was a board member, President and Immediate Past-President of the National Association for the Education and Advancement of Cambodian, Laotian, and Vietnamese Americans (1998-2004). She served on the Gates Millennium Scholarship Review Board (1998-2002) to ensure equity for student scholars from diverse backgrounds. She also served on the advisory boards of a number of community-based organizations and was an elected school board trustee

Trong Phan was born and raised in the war-torn Vietnam. He was fifteen when the war ended in 1975. Phan learned the seascape and attempted to escape Vietnam twelve times in search for freedom.
When arrived in the U.S. in 1980, Phan worked at restaurants, went back to school after many years of interruptions and earned a Bachelor of Science in Engineering from the University of Texas at Austin, TX in 1985. A life-long learner, Phan later earned four Masters in Business Administration, Systems Engineering, Multidisciplinary Studies and a Doctorate in Management and Decision Science in 1997 while working full-time for Department of Defense. He also graduated from the U.S. Army General & Staff College, Squadron’s Officer School, Air Command & Staff College, and Air War College.
After three years with Motorola and Advanced Micro Devices, Phan joined the USAF civil service corps in early 1986. He served as a test engineer for several aircrafts’ electronic support systems. Phan has been the Automatic Test System Division’s engineering team leader, Chair of the engineering council at San Antonio Air Logistics Center, Engineering Section Chief at Kelly AFB and eventually Chief Engineer at the USAF Human Resources Systems Division. During his civil service career, Phan was awarded 20 plus Department of Defense commendations for superior achievement and outstanding performance of duties in a variety of leadership and technical positions including the Air Force Material Command (AFMC) Engineering & Technical Management Career Achievement Award (2000), City of San Antonio Leadership in Profile Award (2002) for community service works, and the distinguished Air Force Civilian Achievement Award Medal (April 2017). Some of his professional accomplishment include:
Formed the Engineering Operations Branch for USAF HR Division to provide systems engineering & IT consultation services to enterprise level projects and issues; e.g. cybersecurity, system and enterprise architecture, tech acquisition & management, tech policy compliance, etc.
Oversaw technical support for $10.3 million promotion board automation - the largest force management modernization in 20 years.
Led platform migration and technology pathfinder for $5 million project for AF wide fitness management program.
Led technology roadmap development for the AFLCMC HR domain values over $500 million dollar in information and technology assets. One of these roadmaps is utilized to modernize the vPSI infrastructure that houses 4 major HR systems.
Participated as IT lead to develop combat development concepts for US Army Medical Department health service that resulted in $20 million MC4 system development.
Led the Engineering division relocation from SA-ALC in San Antonio to WR-ALC in Georgia - preserved and transferred corporate knowledge to insure a smooth organizational transition.
Led an engineering team in two major F-16 ATS acquisitions that successfully fielded four digital and four microwave depot test systems valued over $24 million. Received AF Material Command Career Achievement Award for this effort.
Led F-16 sole-sourced test instruments study and identified 72 items that can be procured competitively - savings to the Air Force exceeded $20 million over 10 years.
Phan is a champion of community service all his life and never forget where he came from; he has volunteered his time with the Vietnam Children’s Fund, Vietnamese Catholic Youth Ministry. He was a vice president for external affairs of Vietnamese American Community in the US. He was one of the founders and board member of Asian American Alliance in San Antonio. He was a chief editor for U.S. Viet News magazine for 5 years. Phan currently serves as a board member with Boat People-SOS. Phan is married to Loan Nguyen and have three college aged children.

Nam brings 30 years of project management & business development experience in the computer industry. He spent most of his professional career with HP & Foxconn. At HP, Nam was a member of the engineering team that created the first industry-standard server. At Foxconn, Nam was leading the establishment of the R&D and manufacturing operations in Houston, Taipei & China. The operations are now a multibillion-dollar business. In entrepreneurship, Nam established three businesses.
Nam devoted most of his free time for volunteering works with the Boy Scouts and with Vietnamese Language Schools. He started two scout groups and was the scoutmaster for the boy scout and varsity scout troops. He was the camp chief of the 2002 Scout Jamboree that was held in Houston with over 3000 scouts. For 4 years, Nam was the principle of the Lavang Vietnamese School and has been teaching Vietnamese history since 2003.
Nam holds a B.S. in Electrical Engineering (BSEE) and an MBA.

Anh Tran is a Senior Consultant and Coach for Lee Hecht Harrison Vietnam. She plays an active role in Lee Hecht Harrison’s Career Transition practice, HR consultancy, and facilitation of workshops.
Anh began her professional career with Procter & Gamble Vietnam in 1995. Due to outstanding performance and learning agility she was rotated and played critical manager roles in Training & Development and Rewards & Recognition. She successfully launched Corporate Training Programs to develop talents; launched Flexi Benefits Plan to help retaining critical employees and reducing staff turnover significantly and deployed Expatriate policies in coordination with Regional HR.
After 6 years working with Procter & Gamble Vietnam, Anh joined the Representative Office of GlaxoSmithKline as Human Resources Manager right after the merger of GlaxoWellcome and SmithKline Beecham. As a member of the Country Leadership Team, she has led the HR Team to execute HR Strategies (Recruitment, Training & Development and Rewards & Recognition) that help building ONE TEAM working culture focusing on delivering business objectives and goals.
In 2004, Anh made decision to join Dumex Vietnam as HR Director, supporting new General Manager in shaping business result. She did manage changes in Dumex Vietnam & Indochina successfully (recruit new leadership team reporting to the General Manager; key positions in Sales & Marketing; build positive working environment … that help business to turn around from losing market share (almost 0%) to becoming a stronger player in Nutrition Industry with 6% market share in 3 years. She led HR Team to execute proper strategies to sustain strong employee engagement and business results during 2 mergers with NUMICO in 2005 and with Danone in 2006. She was recognized as strong HR Partner in Vietnam and in Asia Pacific Region because of excellent in setting and executing talent management strategies.
When Liberty Vietnam running its business in Vietnam in 2007, Anh has been invited to join their Leadership Team to build HR strategies supporting business start-up requirements. With proper plans, HR has built strong Liberty Vietnam Employer Brand in attracting and recruiting potential employees to critical positions including leadership team via positive working culture: result oriented, do the right things and collaboration across functions. Anh has been recognized as strong business partner/ internal consultant in Vietnam and extended support to Thailand and China.
Recently, in 2010 Anh decided to rejoin the Representative Office of GlaxoSmithKline to lead the execution of HR strategies supporting the delivery of business growth ambition focus on building strategic capabilities (talent acquisition & development, processes streamlining and entrepreneur & ethical working environment). Anh has been granted the Gold-Star Award because of valuable contribution to “Best Strategic Capabilities Experience – Vietnam” among Asia Pacific HR Region: reducing staff turnover; GSK Vietnam achieved ambition growth continuously from 2011 to 2016 and contributed the highest organic growth in the region, GSK Vietnam employees had more opportunities working overseas both long-term and short-term and GSK Vietnam has been selected as one of the 100 best companies to work for in Vietnam – all industries (top 5 in Pharmaceuticals Industry), Anphabe Survey.
Anh has acted as Internal Consultant in P&G, Dumex, Liberty and GSK for nineteen years. She is strong in coaching, HR Strategic Capability Building, Talent Acquisition, Talent Assessment and Development, Reward & Recognition, Changes Management, Performance Management and Level 2 Audit.