Moments That Make Us: Amanda Nguyen on Dreaming Big and Finding Common Ground

Family Legacy and Courage

• 💡 Amanda grew up with a dichotomy of powerful women in her family, from an empress in the Nguyen dynasty to rural Vietnamese refugee farmers, both informing her identity.
• 📌 Her mother taught her that courage isn't the absence of fear, but recognizing it and still moving forward, focusing on “just the next pull” during a life-threatening refugee journey.
• 🌱 She struggled with the pressure as an immigrant child to fulfill parents' sacrifices, often feeling obligated to pursue traditional paths like doctor or lawyer, despite her passion for activism.

From Anger to Activism

• 🔥 Her activism was sparked by anger and betrayal upon discovering her rape kit could be destroyed, exposing the “Kafkaesque labyrinth” survivors face in the US justice system.
• ⚠️ She realized that rape is the easiest violent crime to get away with in the US, and victims are unfairly burdened, even having to pay for their own evidence collection.
• ✅ This anger transmuted into hope and action as she fought to rewrite laws, like the Survivor Bill of Rights, ensuring no one else would endure similar injustices.

Radical Empathy and Global Impact

• 🎯 A key to her activism's success is radical empathy, the ability to connect with others' humanity, even those who might be difficult or in positions of power.
• 🤝 This approach enabled her to secure a unanimous UN General Assembly Resolution for Sexual Violence Survivors, even gaining Pope Francis's blessing by finding common ground.
• 🌍 She believes that the world can change when you speak up, demonstrating that “impossible is really just an opinion” when pursuing justice.

Fulfilling a Lifelong Dream: Space

• 🚀 Amanda fulfilled her childhood dream of going to space, keeping a promise to her “survivor self” and experiencing the opposite of imposter syndrome.
• 🔬 Her space experiments included plant pathology (diplomacy with Vietnam and Southeast Asia) and women's health research on menstruation and early breast cancer detection.
• ✨ She aims to inspire others, showing that dreams, no matter how wild, can come true, and science can be a tool for diplomacy and saving lives.

Finding Joy and Connection

• 🧠 She finds “radical joy” in nerdy pursuits like analyzing exoplanet transit data from missions like Kepler, charting dips in light to discover new planets.
• 💖 Beyond data, she cherishes the ability to grow in life with people, finding joy and gratitude in the support of her community and friends.