2020 ICAN INSPIRE Scholarship Cohort

Amanda Doan is a junior at UC Santa Barbara, double majoring in Sociology and Asian American Studies and minoring in Educational Studies. She was an officer of UCSB Vietnamese Student Association from 2018-2020. As a first year officer in VSA for the 2018-2019 term, she mentored and hosted workshops for the Vietnamese Outreach Initiative for College Education (VOICE), a free three-day mentorship program on the UCSB campus for low-income high school students all over California and assisted in planning and executing events to fundraise $2,000 to donate to SEA-RAC, a civil rights non-profit dedicated to helping the Southeast Asian American community. As a second year officer in VSA for the 2019-2020 term, she coordinated Pho King, an annual male pageant with college student representatives from all over Southern California. Pho King is a philanthropy show that aims to address the underlying issue of masculinity and gender norms within the Asian Pacific Islander community. All proceeds from the charity event are in the process of being donated to Freedom INC, a civil-rights nonprofit dedicated to gender justice, queer justice, and Black & Southeast Asian Liberation. On top of this, she also led cultural events that touched upon Asian American identity and minority identity for UCSB students. She is passionate about dismantling the barriers of higher education in oppressed communities and creating accessible, quality education for all. In her free time, she enjoys travelling and discovering restaurants that sell the best fried chicken. Her favorite country to visit so far is Taiwan.

Dan Nguyen is a first-generation student studying Economics and Anthropology at Yale. She feels that her first test of grit and hardship was when she moved to the US at 12 years old with her family. The experience empowered her to see that there are strengths and inspiration as much as there are challenges and anxieties in every step of life. Given this background, she always wants to contribute to every community that she is a part of to expand her perspective and to make herself useful to others.

During her high school years in San Jose, she volunteered to teach Vietnamese at Van Lang Language School because she believed in the power of culture in empowering one's sense of self. She came to know ICAN when she worked with the Vietnamese Voluntary Foundation to help case management for the distribution of aid to Vietnamese families affected by the 2017 flood. At Yale, she has been volunteering as a certified tax preparer to help low-income New Haven residents file their taxes since 2017. She also served as the Co-president of the Vietnamese Student Association at Yale. During her tenure, she was able to establish a partnership between her school's VSA and the New England Student Collegiate, organize a $600 fundraiser for families of the Essex human trafficking incident, and promote an organizational restructuring. She reconnected with ICAN in March 2020 when Yale sponsored a spring break experience for her to learn from ICAN's effort in community development. Now a college senior, she looks forward to putting her education in development economics to securing a career in impact investing, especially in social infrastructure like affordable housing and in businesses with great missions, to scale her impact and give back to the communities that have helped her.

Nguyen Vo is now a senior at San Jose State University majoring in Public Health with a concentration on Administration. She graduated from Ohlone College with an AS degree in Human Development, Social Science, and Business. Besides working with ICAN as a Volunteer Intern, she also works as a Teacher’s Assistant for PH104 (Community Health Promotion) and a Public Health Peer Advisor and at the DDS Office on the weekends to learn about admin fields. Her long-term goal is to continue studying for an MS and MD degree at UCSF or UC Berkeley, majoring in Public Health Policy and Management.

Her dream is to become a leader in the public health industry. Born and raised in Vietnam, she understands the gaps and difficulties that Vietnamese people have been going through, especially in the healthcare field. She wants to bring her knowledge to help and develop a strong community by making the healthcare system of the Vietnamese community more modern and agile, especially in removing social class discrimination in medical examinations and treatments here. She feels fortunate to currently work with ICAN as a Volunteer Intern as well as previously as a Research Intern in our 2020 Summer Internship Program. Here, she has the opportunity to reach out to the Vietnamese community in San Jose, listen to and aid with what the community needs, and most importantly to help people understand the importance of public health.

Alicia Luong is a third-year transfer student at UC Berkeley who, with her personal passions rooted in community advocacy, organizing, and leadership, has taken on a variety of roles in the Vietnamese-American youth community. As a Judge’s Coordinator, she helped organize an annual Vietnamese culture show for high school VSAs. She also volunteers with local non-profit and student organizations like Vietnamese American Roundtable, Hoa Khôi Liên Trường, Cal Vietnamese Students Association, and Cal VSA’s VISION mentorship program. Alicia was formerly a Youth Advisory Member for Allcove, where she outreached, collaborated with, and represented youth needs in the development of Allcove’s new integrated mental health and primary care sites. As a psychology major, Alicia plans to intersect her dedication to the Vietnamese-American youth community with her foundation in psychology by achieving her Bachelor’s and, eventually, Doctor of Psychology (Psy.D) degrees in order to practice clinical psychology in a community healthcare center in the near future.

Diane Pham will be graduating from Hayward High School and is extremely eager to be attending UCLA in hopes of pursuing education or public health. She enjoys being around youth and helping empower first generation college students and minorities, and is therefore looking forward to volunteering and being a part of ICAN. She gives a lot of credit to a program she is in, Summer Search, because they are the sole reason that she is attending a 4-year university. They provided her with a lot of resources and guidance towards the path of higher education and she is especially grateful for them. She says, “I can't wait to see what college has in store for me beyond getting a degree; I hope to dive deeper into my self identity as a Southeast Asian woman through involvement in cultural clubs and programs.”

James Tran will be graduating from high school this year and will be a freshman at the University of Southern California this fall. He is majoring in Human Biology and hopes to have a career in Oncology. He hopes to further research for curing cancer in this field. In his volunteer time, he has worked at the Soup Kitchen led by members of the Vietnamese community in collaboration with a temple that he lives near. Besides this, a recent passion of his is photography, specifically film.