Nguyen, Thuy Duong

Thuy "Lisa" Duong Nguyen was a refugee whose family lived in Hong Kong for three years before resettling in Australia. She speaks about her advocacy work with Vietnamese refugees in Southeast Asia, especially in Cambodia. Lisa is the founder of Senhoa Foundation, a nonprofit organization that works with vulnerable persons and survivors of human trafficking in Cambodia. She graduated from a Bachelor of Law and Master of Laws from the University of Sydney. After a short stint in corporate law, Lisa left Australia to volunteer as a legal representative and advocate for stateless Vietnamese refugees remaining in the Philippines. Since this time, she has worked extensively on issues relating to refugee protection. From 2007 to 2009, she was the Executive Director of VOICE in Washington D.C. and worked on overseeing the resettlement of nearly 300 stateless Vietnamese in the Philippines to Canada. In 2010, Lisa founded and became the first Executive Director of Senhoa Foundation. For her community service work, she was awarded the Order of Australia Association Medal for Community Services and Young Australian-Vietnamese of the Year. Outside of her nonprofit work, Lisa is a host for Asia Entertainment Inc., a variety musical production company with over 4 million viewers worldwide and top promoter of Vietnamese artists and entertainers. Lisa also hosts the Asia Channel, a popular show on Saigon Broadcasting Television Network (SBTN), based in California and is available on Comcast and DirecTV.

2012-07-27

Interviewer: Nancy Bui

Audio and Video Recorder: Ted Acheson