Nhu Chi Khong– Huntsville, Alabama - USA

The following was excerpted from an article written about NhuChi when she won “Woman of the Year” award in Huntsville in 2008.

“Have you ever had a second chance to live the American dream after your dream was destroyed when your country was taken over by the Communist? Nhuchi Khong, one of millions Vietnamese “Boat” people, was given a second chance and has fulfilled the American dream.

Nhuchi escaped Vietnam in 1982 when she was 20 years old with her 19 years old young brother. She left in the cover of darkness and packed on a 10 meter long fishing boat like sardines. Whether it was faith or destiny, she and her brother were rescued by the United States Libra boat after 3 days and 4 nights floating on the Pacific Ocean. The United States Libra boat took her, her brother and 50 others to Singapore where she was assigned to a Singapore refugee camp and an Indonesia refugee camp. She spent one year in both refugee camps waiting for the paperwork to finish coming to the United States.

On January 1983, she came to New Orleans, Louisiana, with a sponsor by a Catholic Church. She began learning English and worked very hard toward her Bachelor degree in Electrical Engineering from the Louisiana State University (LSU). She has encountered many obstacles during her college years. She struggled with English as her second language. She struggled with money because she was very poor. She constantly coped with the American cultures as there are so many differences between Asian cultures and American cultures. All her college books were darkened with pencils translating English to Vietnamese. It took her so many hours to translate, read, and memorize all her college course works. During her college years, she always held a minimum of two low paid jobs such as restaurant waitresses and supermarket cashiers supporting herself in college and her parents who were still in Vietnam.

In 1988, she graduated from LSU with a GPA of 3.5 and began her first engineering job with McDonell Douglas, now Boeing, in Long Beach, California. She continued to study while working as a junior engineer.

She completed her Master Degree in System Engineering at Texas A&M with a GPA of 3.75 before coming to Huntsville, Alabama. She also completed her Master of Business Administration (MBA) from Florida Institutes of Technology (FIT) with a GPA of 4.0 in 1996. Her academic excellence was only a minor stepping stone towards her success as a dedicated, motivated, and intelligent engineer. She moved to Huntsville, Alabama in 1991 and began her professional work.

In 2005, Nhuchi returned to the very same soil she was born on for the first time since she left in 1982. It was very emotional. That trip has sparked her to provide more community supports and cultural supports. She decided to become a board member of the International Society of Huntsville. The purpose of the corporations is to bring diverse international elements together for social interaction and cultural awareness in the general region of Huntsville, Alabama. The board consists of twenty-four members of mixed international origin and Nhuchi represents Vietnam.

Nhuchi is the first Vietnamese American generation in her family in America and it has helped her to reach her goal. As she achieves the American dream, she has never lost a sense of culture and a sense of language because Vietnamese Americans have such a proud and rich history to offer. She always remembers where she came from. Nhuchi, as an immigrant, only succeeds because of the opportunities in America, her motivation, her non-stop hard working, and her strong ethics. She is remarkably grateful for those opportunities and she has used them to build a better life for herself and her family, but more importantly, to build stronger American generations.”