This upcoming year, Minhchau is eager to start her own mentorship project: the Asian Pacific Islander Recruitment Initiative Mentorship Engagement (APRIME) Program. She is also Co-Chair of the upcoming Norcal UVSA Summit in November 2009. Minhchau will pursue a legal degree to fight for the civil rights of Asian Pacific Islander Americans as a lawyer and a grassroots community organizer in her hometown of Stockton.

Born, raised, and attending college in her hometown in the Central Valley of California, Minhchau is a second generation Vietnamese American and the middle child of a family with three daughters. From her traditional upbringing and the love she has for her parents, the following Vietnamese idiom resonates deeply within her: Công cha như núi Thái Sơn, nghĩa mẹ như nước trong nguồn chảy ra, một lòng thờ mẹ kính cha, cho tròn chữ hiếu mới là đạo con.

Cristina Doan

Cristina Doan was born and raised in San Jose, California. After growing up in the midst of poverty and gang violence in East San Jose, she developed a passion for changing what she had seen.

Cristina recently graduated from Santa Teresa High School, where she was involved in many clubs and organizations dedicated to motivating teenagers to improve their communities and to stay away from violence. She founded a peer counseling club at her high school that aimed to break down racial barriers at the school. In honor of her efforts in the peer counseling club, Cristina was awarded a Certificate of Accomplishment from the Princeton University Prize in Race Relations. Cristina was also Vice President of her high school’s Key Club and won the award of Distinguished Vice President, an award given to only ten vice presidents in three states. She received the G. Harold Martin Fellowship Award for her outstanding leadership ability in Key Club. In addition, Cristina was Vice-chairperson of the San Jose Youth Advisory Council for District Two and also served as Vice-chairperson of her high school’s School Site Council. She helped change her school’s Student Plan to better fit the needs of its students.

Cristina has worked for San Jose Mayor Chuck Reed and has volunteered at local non-profits, homeless shelters, and hospitals to assist underserved communities and has tutored other students. Cristina maintained a 4.2 GPA at Santa Teresa High School and was also a member of the California Scholarship Federation and the National Honor Society. She also captained her Relay For Life team.

Cristina plans to major in Political Science at the University of California, Berkeley, and hopes to become a professor teaching the subject at the university level. She hopes that throughout her lifetime, she can continue to enlighten young people and motivate them to make positive changes in their communities. Cristina also dreams of becoming a politician and speaking up about the violence in the streets of San Jose in an effort to make neighborhoods safe places, especially for young people.

Victoria Ho

Victoria Ho is a freshman at Baylor University and a recent graduate of St. Agnes Academy in Houston, Texas, where she developed an interest in working towards social justice. Her commitment to volunteering began in 2007 at the Vietnamese American National Gala (VANG). She was inspired to follow in the footsteps of the influential Asian Americans in attendance who dedicated their time and talent to making a positive impact on society.

After VANG, Victoria tutored at a local non-profit organization, Project Communities Assisting Literacy and Learning. After realizing that there were high school students and adults who could not read past the third grade level, she knew she had to involve herself in making her community a better, more successful place. Enjoying the satisfaction of children increasing their reading comprehension, she began tutoring more Vietnamese students after school at a local library.

At St. Agnes, Victoria co-founded the American Red Cross Club, and was an active member of the Eastern Pacific Youth Club, Students Against Modern Day Slavery Club, and the Spanish Club. She was also a member of the Campus Ministry Team (CMT), where her and her teammates were responsible for planning spiritual activities that involved students around campus and in the community. Months after Hurricane Ike, she and CMT traveled to Galveston to provide any kind of help for the city, including picking up trash along the coast, revitalizing gardens, and painting houses. She was also a junior counselor for Camp Shining Stars of the National Kidney Foundation of Southeast Texas, which is dedicated to children who have kidney and urinary tract disease. At the camp, she was surrounded by children who do not get the chance to be “regular kids” because of their disability, so her main goal was to make them feel welcome and accepted.

In the future, Victoria hopes to create a student-run program at Baylor University dedicated to people who are affected by illiteracy. She hopes to continue her hard work and earn a degree in the field of healthcare.

Linh Hoang

Raised in a family of ten people whose main priority was always to place the needs of others before their own, Linh Hoang has faithfully lived out her family’s teachings since the age of eleven, when she first began her volunteer work as a church youth choir member at Vietnamese Martyrs Catholic Church in Houston, Texas.

Linh is currently a third year psychology major at the University of St. Thomas in Houston. In addition to being a full-time student, she is also juggling a part-time job as an administrative assistant. Nonetheless, she still finds time in her busy schedule to volunteer on a weekly basis. Linh’s volunteer work is focused mainly at Vietnamese Martyrs Catholic Church as a Lifeteen Youth Band Coordinator and CORE Member. She also participates in monthly community service projects as a member of Leading and Serving Together (LAST), which trains youth to be leaders of their church and servants of the community through activities that have included organizing holiday activities for patients at the Ronald McDonald House of Charities, visiting various nursing homes around Houston, and actively partaking in community-wide and city-wide fundraising events.

Linh’s hobbies include singing as well as playing the guitar, and she utilizes these gifts in her volunteer work. In the near future, she hopes to jumpstart a community youth outreach program which allows teens and young adults to utilize their talents to perform for hospitals, nursing homes, and housing shelters. This not only benefits the residents of these community centers, but also gives the teens a positive environment in which to spend their time and to keep them away from violence, drugs, and other negative influences so that they may pave for themselves a path with a more promising future. Linh aspires to extend her services further by one day becoming a speech pathologist and music therapist with a focus on pediatrics to improve the health of mentally or physically disabled children and adolescents.

Annie Le

Annie Le recently graduated with a degree in Psychology from UCLA and is currently enrolled in the UCSF School of Medicine Postbaccalaureate Program, working towards her goal of becoming a Pediatrician and opening a clinic in a low-income and underserved community. As refugees fleeing the Vietnam War, Annie’s family came to the United States with no money and very few options. The first in her family to graduate from college, she earned numerous scholarships to pay for her education at UCLA, including a Gates Millennium Scholarship.

Growing up with financial obstacles, Annie has learned to appreciate the opportunities she was given and has focused her efforts on helping those in need of the guidance she received from counselors, teachers, and other family members. Her proudest experience at UCLA is her involvement with the Higher Opportunity Program for Education (HOPE) – a non-profit student-run and student-initiated project that works with at-risk Asian American students in Los Angeles and Orange County. As the HOPE Peer Advising Coordinator, Annie trained, monitored, and provided feedback to thirty peer advising volunteers, who each managed a caseload of three to four students. She coordinated parent workshops, educational discussions on culture and politics, and the HOPE Kick-Off Day, which gathered over 100 at-risk high school students to empower them to become leaders in their communities and strive for higher education while maintaining healthy lifestyles. Annie personally mentored four students, two of whom throughout their entire high school careers. With the help of the guidance and motivation she provided during their weekly meetings, the students became empowered incoming freshmen at UCI, UCSD, and UCLA.

As External Vice President and UCLA’s Liaison at the state level for two years in the Association of Chinese Americans, Annie chaired community service events helping the Chinatown community and coordinated fundraisers benefitting Asian American communities affected by Hurricane Katrina. She also worked with children living in single-parent, government housing in Los Angeles through UCLA’s Community Outreach Prevention and Education Program, presenting health modules on topics ranging from hygiene to nutrition. Annie plans to travel to Southeast Asia to provide health care at no cost.

Kevin Lee

Kevin Lee recently graduated from the University of California, Berkeley, majoring in both Psychology and Ethnic Studies. Throughout his time at Cal, Kevin was active in the Asian and Pacific Islander community and building coalitions with other communities of color, in an effort to combat pervasive and institutional social and political injustices within society. His passion for positive social change culminated in efforts to organize people of color to understand these inequalities through discourse and action. Kevin has focused primarily on access to education, in which he has worked to ensure that education is a right, not a privilege. Through REACH! Asian/Pacific Islander Recruitment & Retention Center, Kevin has worked extensively with high school and college students, addressing a host of social and political issues, as a means to help these students educate and empower themselves. He provided academic outreach to students all across California, coordinated multiple programs, organized conferences, strategized campaigns, and planned numerous events. Furthermore, Kevin’s experience with True Asian Leaders (TAL), a high school mentorship, has provided him with the opportunity to mentor and tutor a cohort of talented students from low-income communities within the Bay Area.

Kevin is presently involved with Asian American Community Training (ACT), which trains students to understand grassroots organizing as a tool for movement building. His involvement with Chinese for Affirmative Action focuses on issues of civil rights, namely immigration and education, through advocacy and direct services with Asian immigrants.

Focusing on health disparities experienced by the Asian and Pacific Islander community and other disadvantaged communities, Kevin is currently interning at the Asian & Pacific Islander Wellness Center to conduct a study assessing the effectiveness of HIV youth intervention programs. Moreover, Kevin is an HIV test counselor at the Berkeley Free Clinic, where he provides individual risk reduction counseling to promote prevention through knowledge and awareness.

Ultimately, Kevin hopes to attain a Master of Public Health before pursuing medical school, where he hopes to eventually integrate the practice and philosophy of prevention and treatment through education and empowerment in order to provide accessible healthcare to underserved communities of color.

Michael Khoa Nguyen

Michael Khoa Nguyen is majoring in Biochemistry at the University of Texas at Austin and will graduate in May 2010. He is the incoming President of the Vietnamese Students Association (VSA) at UT Austin – an organization of approximately 300 students. His vision for the organization is to promote not only cultural retention but to heavily emphasize community service, especially in the Vietnamese community and the greater Austin community. He wants to create several opportunities for the VSA members to use their skills to give back to the community. Michael hopes to expand on traditional community service opportunities offered to the members of VSA, namely volunteering at an afterschool program at the local Summit Elementary, where VSA members volunteer every weekday to tutor Vietnamese children and provide these young students with positive role models to interact with. One initiative that VSA took on while Michael was an officer was an event called Spring Fling, a homecoming-themed dance that raised awareness about Sunflower Mission, a non-profit organization that builds schools and enhances educational opportunities for children in Vietnam. One of Michael’s goals is to create a scholarship for the VSA members to encourage involvement within the organization that translates into more community involvement.

Since middle school, Michael has spent his time volunteering in the city of Houston, from working at food pantries to Habitat for Humanity projects. In particular, he has enjoyed working with children, whether through teaching Catholic education to Pre-Kindergarten students for two years during his junior and senior years in high school, to teaching a summer tennis program for children ages four to eighteen years old. During his three years in college, he has participated in several community projects and does not plan to stop in the future.

Michael hopes to enter the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio for dental school following his graduation from UT Austin. As a dentist, he wants to start a dental practice that provides affordable care to all patients, especially those in the Vietnamese community of Houston, Texas.

Tuyen Nguyen

Tuyen Nguyen was born in Bien Hoa, Vietnam, and immigrated to the United States when she was two years old. She recently graduated from Jersey Village High School in Houston, Texas, and will be attending NYU to obtain a degree in Business Management, International Business, and Marketing. She hopes to continue her education at the NYU Stern School of Business.

Tuyen has been an active member of the American Red Cross since the age of sixteen and volunteered at a point of distribution site during Hurricane Ike. She has also volunteered with the Houston Food Bank. During the winter of 2008, Tuyen volunteered as an optician on a medical mission back to Vietnam, joining several doctors and medical students to provide free medical examinations and distribute medical supplies to the homeless and others in need.

Tuyen was also an Assistant Summer Swim Team Coach at her local YMCA, and was a 2006 All-American Softball player. Tuyen also joined Hope Initiative at the age of sixteen as a member and is currently an officer within the organization. She has dedicated her time and energy to coordinating and promoting fundraising activities within the organization, most notably the HI calendar project, which raises funds for orphanages in Vietnam.

Minh Pho

Minh Pho was born in Houston, Texas, where he graduated from Clements High School and is currently a freshman at Rice University. He is the second of three children. While in high school, Minh attained the rank of Eagle Scout with Boy Scout Troop 1845 by helping to lead a team of over twenty scouts in renovating a dilapidated playground for the Kids Unlimited Foundation, which provides support to children with cancer and their families.

As a member of his high school’s National Honor Society, Minh worked on several community service projects, including a Senior Citizens dance which was attended by 150 senior citizens from area nursing homes and neighborhood. Throughout high school, Minh volunteered at Memorial Hermann Southwest Hospital for over 100 hours, helping to transport and interact with patients. He also dedicated many hours to his school’s International Club. As Communications Coordinator, he helped set up the school’s annual International Festival. Minh led his high school swim team as captain of the boys’ varsity team, and he has competed at the NCSA Junior Nationals Championships.

Minh hopes to obtain a degree in medicine, with which he would like to return to Vietnam on a medical mission to impoverished, rural parts of the country that he has seen first-hand.

Bruce Thao

Bruce Kou Thao is currently a second year MA/PhD student in Social Work at the University of Chicago. The son of Hmong refugees who escaped persecution during the Vietnam War, Bruce learned from an early age the struggles immigrant and refugee families and communities must overcome in order to succeed in the United States. These experiences continue to propel him forward as he works to advocate for those who are marginalized and oppressed.

Originally from Lancaster, Pennsylvania, Bruce completed his BS/MS in Experimental Psychology at Saint Joseph's University in Philadelphia. He has been actively involved in human rights and workers' rights activism, international volunteer work, counseling children with severe mental illness and histories of abuse, and empowering inner-city youth. Bruce has been able to combine his experience with the performing arts with youth outreach, founding and directing several youth empowerment programs for at-risk youth.

Upon graduation, Bruce volunteered with the Jesuit Volunteer Corps in San Jose, California, where he was the Program Manager of Youth Services, managing a $1 million grant for four after-school programs serving at-risk Latino and Asian youth. While in California, he also volunteered as a rape crisis counselor.

His current research interests are prevention and intervention programs with immigrant and refugee youth and resilience factors in post-war child refugees, with a particular interest in the Southeast Asian community. Bruce is the current recipient of a University of Chicago Human Rights internship, in which he is working with an international NGO serving the Hmong community in rural Thailand. He is working to empower the poor and victims of domestic violence and provide rehabilitation, housing and education for street children who are addicted to drugs or have been abused.

Bruce intends to conduct research on immigrant and refugee issues in order to strengthen the knowledge base and advocate for the development of more effective policies and social services for these communities. Additionally, he intends on consulting for international organizations such as UNHCR and UNICEF. Bruce is also eager to teach in a university setting and mentor Southeast Asian youth, who are often underrepresented in the university setting.

Nickie Tran

Nickie Tran was born in Houston, Texas, and she has a younger sister and a younger brother. Nickie is currently a third-year history major and government minor at the University of Texas at Austin. Nickie is active in the Vietnamese Students Association (VSA) at UT Austin. Her experience as the VSA culture chair her sophomore year of college sparked her interest in working with the Vietnamese community of Austin. Nickie loves being a part of VSA. VSA is a home away from home for her, and has opened many doors for her. She co-hosted a fundraiser for State Representative Hubert Vo. Nickie also volunteered for numerous community events, such as the opening of the Vietnamese American exhibit in the Bob Bullock Museum and the Oral History exhibit in the Texas Library. She will be returning next year as VSA’s secretary.

For Austin’s annual Black April Memorial, which commemorates the fall of the South Vietnamese government and the first wave of Vietnamese refugees, Nickie was the head director for the planning committee, marking the first time a VSA student headed the event. Currently, with community support, VSA has started a petition to recognize the Vietnamese Heritage and Freedom flag, and Nickie has designed a new Vietnamese American panel to be displayed in the Texas Culture Showcase Room.

Nickie loves participating in the community because she wants to learn and preserve Vietnamese culture for the next generation. She is proficient in Vietnamese and hopes to bridge the gap between the older and younger generation. Nickie hopes to become a lawyer to provide bilingual legal assistance to limited English proficient persons who navigate the legal system with great difficulty.

Nickie also hopes to continue her participation in the Vietnamese community and encourage other VSA members to become leaders in the community. This year, she is part of Pacific Asian American Network (PAAN), which hopes to bring together Asian American organizations on campus in order to address issues facing Asian Americans as a whole.