Van Lan Truong

Van Lan Truong had a lifelong track record as a Vietnamese community organizer and advocate. Her experience community services and violence prevention were also rooted in her eight-year role as Boston Mayor Raymond Flynn’s liaison to the Boston area Vietnamese community. She was the senior leader in the Boston Mayor’s Office of Neighborhood Services who handled all aspects of the Greater Boston area’s Vietnamese community relations. She has actively participated in the re-election of the 4-term Mayor Flynn and the election of the current 3-term Boston Mayor Thomas Menino. She recently relocated to California, and wasted no time to establish firm ties with the San Jose area Vietnamese community and the region’s political landscape. For example, she volunteered and was selected as a key campaign team member on State Assemblyman Jim Beall’s campaign for California State Senator. In the Beall campaign, she was responsible for organizing and strategizing the San Jose Asian minority votes. The Beall campaign was a success. She has extensive knowledge in working with the Vietnamese Community in the U.S., having served as a co-founder of the National Congress of Vietnamese Americans and founder of the Vietnamese American Women’s League of Massachusetts. She is passionate about organizing the Vietnamese community in all aspects for social change and social justice. Prior to relocation to San Jose, she served four years as a principal community organizer for a famed Boston area organization called Close to Home, which engages with local city residents as well as the Vietnamese community on domestic violence and sexual violence prevention. She has given talks in the area of domestic violence at several national conferences, including at the recent Asian & Pacific Islander Institute on Domestic Violence National Summit, and the California Coalition Against Sexual Assault (2010). Van Lan is a graduate of the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.