Overseas Vietnamese
A professional network for Vietnamese worldwide.
10
From Harvard MBA to Vietnamese Nail Salons
<p>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.</p><p>She shares how she evaluated which industry to pursue, why she focused on Vietnamese-owned nail salons, what people underestimate about SMB acquisitions, and how she rebuilt operations, culture, and processes from scratch. Her story blends corporate discipline with immigrant grit — and shows how business ownership can become a path to aut...
Hardship as Training: Vincent Vu’s Lessons on Grit & Problem-Solving
<p>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.</p><p>After three failed startups, Vincent founded Kinis AI, a movement-intelligence platform using balance, gait, and motion analysis to prevent falls for aging populations. His story is a masterclass in grit, reinvention, and solving real human problems.</p><p>We talk about hardship as training, why curiosity beats expertise, what barefoot marathons taught him ab...
Vietnam Is Underrated: Stephen Turban on Building Globally From Saigon
<p>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.</p><p>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.</p><p>Stephen Turban is the co-founder of Lumiere, a global education platform that helps thousands of students conduct research with PhDs. He studied at Harvard, worked at McKinsey, learned Vietnamese, pe...
From Cambridge to Saigon: Linh Pham on Building Vietnam’s Uber for Trucks
<p>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.</p><p>We discuss Linh’s journey from Cambridge to Saigon, what she learned building in Vietnam’s opaque logistics market, and how she’s now combining logistics and AI with her new startup, FreightPilot.AI.</p><p>Linh Pham is the Founder and CEO of LOGIVAN and FreightPilot.AI, two technology ventures transforming Vietnam’s logistics and supply c...
How Hao Tran Built Vietcetera – Lessons on Starting from Zero in Vietnam
<p>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.</p><p>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 country.</p><p>Hao Tran is the Co-founder & CEO of Vietcetera, a leading media network founded in 2016 with the mission to bring Vietnam to the world and the worl...
From Debt to Exit: Francois Le Nguyen on Redefining Success and Returning to Vietnam
<p>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. </p><p>We discuss the ambition that drove him, the failures that shaped him, and how success and identity evolve when you reconnect with your roots. </p><p>Francois Le Nguyen is a Vietnamese-Canadian founder, investor, and former General Manager at Entrepreneur First in Singapore and Toronto. He has backed and built dozens of startups globally and now calls Saigon home, where he’s helping bridge Vietnam with the w...
Leaving Big Tech for Belonging: Mai Vo’s Journey Creating Podium
<p>Mai Vo left Big Tech to solve a problem she lived: modern women navigating big life and career transitions without a trusted peer group. She founded Podium, a connection platform that brings small, curated circles together in person—so women can find support, clarity, and momentum. </p><p>We talk about the reality behind “glorified entrepreneurship,” why she did 65 unscalable events to build a playbook, what community impact actually looks like, and how Vietnamese heritage and operating in Vietnam/Singapore shaped her leadership. </p><p>Mai Vo is the Co-founder & CEO of Podium, a platform for modern women (late 20s–40s) t...
Becoming Tech Entrepreneur As Medical Doctor – Kevin Huynh
<p>Kevin Huynh is the co‑founder and CEO of PiKNiK & Company, where he leads the development of boutique cloud computing services built on open‑source storage protocols. With a background in medicine, management consulting, and venture investing, Kevin combines deep technical expertise with strategic insights. Under his leadership, PiKNiK is working to decentralize and democratize data for businesses and individuals worldwide.</p><p>In this episode, we dive into his entrepreneurial journey, lessons from consulting to tech entrepreneurship, and what drives him as an overseas Vietnamese founder.</p>
From TikTok to Bank CEO – Khanh P. Ngo
<p>Overseas Vietnamese (OV) is a private network for Vietnamese professionals, entrepreneurs & leaders worldwide.</p><p>You us at joinov.com</p><p>----</p><p>In OV Career Stories, we share about the lives & careers of our members.</p><p>This week, we chatted with Khanh P. Ngo—Chief Executive Officer at Liobank.</p><p>In this conversation, Quang interviews Khang about his personal and professional journey, focusing on his experiences in networking, career transitions, and leadership. Khang shares insights on the importance of relationships in Vietnam, the challenges of moving from consulting to roles in tech and banking, an...
From Immigrant to Innovator – Michael Nguyen
<p>Overseas Vietnamese (OV) is a private network for Vietnamese professionals, entrepreneurs & leaders worldwide.</p><p>You us at joinov.com</p><p>----</p><p>In OV Career Stories, we share about the lives & careers of our members.</p><p>This week, we chatted with Michael Nguyen—Co-founder of Opus Match.</p><p>In this conversation, Michael shares his journey from being the first-generation child of Vietnamese immigrants to becoming an entrepreneur in Silicon Valley. He discusses the cultural expectations placed on him by his parents, his passion for computer science sparked by video games, and the challenges he fa...
