Overseas Vietnamese

Madame Tôn Nữ Thị Ninh is one of Vietnam’s most respected diplomats, intellectuals, and public thinkers. Over decades, she represented Vietnam on the global stage and played an important role in shaping the country’s diplomatic voice during its modern era.In this conversation, we talk about her extraordinary life journey, from growing up between Vietnam and France, to returning during wartime,...

Bùi Kiến Thành is one of the most influential economic thinkers behind modern Vietnam. Over decades, he advised governments, institutions, and leaders on how Vietnam could move from scarcity to strength – not through ideology, but through pragmatic economic thinking.In this conversation, we talk about what actually built modern Vietnam: the shift toward markets, the role of private enterprise,...

Will & Tina share how they met at an OV event in Saigon — and how a chance connection turned into a relationship, a shared life in Vietnam, and eventually a content-creator journey built on honesty and everyday moments.Will grew up in Germany and previously worked at Google. Tina spent eight years studying in the U.S. before returning to Vietnam to become a university lecturer. Together, they...

Quoc Luong grew up scavenging for food on the streets of Saigon – and went on to become one of Vietnam’s most accomplished deep-tech founders. After teaching himself English at 26, he earned scholarships to Cornell and UC Berkeley, built a life in Silicon Valley, and ultimately returned to Vietnam to found Realtime Robotics (RtR): the country’s first high-tech drone company to invent, design, and...

Truc Nguyen left a high-achieving path — JP Morgan, HP, Deloitte, Harvard MBA — to pursue a very different ambition: buying and operating small businesses. What started as a career reset turned into a deep exploration of Vietnamese-American entrepreneurship and the power of rolling up service businesses the right way.She shares how she evaluated which industry to pursue, why she focused on...

Vincent Vu’s journey is extraordinary. From escaping Vietnam by boat at age seven and spending six years in a refugee camp, to immigrating to the U.S., rebuilding his life from nothing, and eventually becoming an engineer leading global teams across the world.After three failed startups, Vincent founded Kinis AI, a movement-intelligence platform using balance, gait, and motion analysis to prevent...

Stephen Turban shares why Vietnam became one of the most meaningful chapters of his life – and why he chose Saigon as the base to build Lumiere, an 8-figure global education company.We talk about the advantages he found in Vietnam, what he learned building globally from Asia, the talent he discovered here and the identity shift that comes from committing to a place far from home.Stephen Turban is...

Linh Pham left a career at Goldman Sachs in London to return to Vietnam and build LOGIVAN, a trucking marketplace often called the “Uber for Trucks.” Her company has raised over $8 million USD and connects more than 20,000 truck drivers and companies nationwide.We discuss Linh’s journey from Cambridge to Saigon, what she learned building in Vietnam’s opaque logistics market, and how she’s now...

Hao Tran shares his journey from the Bay Area to Saigon – and how being laid off in Silicon Valley led him to co-found Vietcetera, now one of Vietnam’s most influential media companies.We talk about how Vietnam has changed in the past decade, what it takes for overseas Vietnamese to thrive when they return, and what Hao has learned from building a 70-person media business in a fast-evolving...

Francois “Frankie” Le Nguyen opens up about his unlikely path — from a teenage entrepreneur in debt to building and selling a cybersecurity startup, investing in 50 companies, and ultimately returning home to Vietnam. We discuss the ambition that drove him, the failures that shaped him, and how success and identity evolve when you reconnect with your roots. Francois Le Nguyen is a...