PIVOT Fellow Spotlight - Vu Anh Nguyen
/Hi everyone, my name is Vu Anh. Despite immigrating to the U.S. at a young age, I have always felt connected to and motivated by my Vietnamese roots. This past May, I graduated from Wesleyan University (CT) with a degree in Government and East Asian Studies. I am passionate about challenging Model Minority narratives and uplifting the voices of Asian Americans who are too often sidelined in politics. I became interested in AAPI advocacy when I interned at the U.S. Dept. of Labor and was on the planning committee for the inaugural AAPI Civil Rights Forum in Boston. I remember that while on my way to attend this very event, I was approached by a stranger who questioned where I was "really from" and told me to leave politics to “real Americans". Instead of deterring me, those discriminatory words led me to conduct research into factors inhibiting AAPI political participation and how to combat them. My experience as an ESL tutor and advocate for survivors of domestic abuse further fueled my commitment to expanding representation for disempowered groups.
Through working with PIVOT and the Asian American Advocacy Fund, I hope to fight misinformation and disengagement within the Vietnamese American community so that we can build political capital and be a force for progressive change. I feel so honored and excited to contribute to this important work!
