QuestBridge Alum, Yale '11
Data Scientist, QuestBridge
Vi immigrated to Des Moines, Iowa from Vietnam, with her parents and younger brother. At the age of 10, Vi began translating for her parents as the family navigated America’s English, culture, blue-collar jobs, public housing, and mental health system with plenty of successes and failures. Vi went on to study economics, computer science, and public policy at Yale, and the University of Chicago. She is a QuestBridge Scholar, a Dell Scholar, and an Education Pioneers fellow.
Her career north star revolves around education and data. She co-founded a youth development program in Vietnam in 2009 that still runs today, and jumpstarted alumni communities in Chicago and the Bay Area. After conducting research for the U.S. Congressional Budget Office, Vi went on to analyze textbook costs, budget allocations, and advisor/tutoring usage for executive decisions at the City Colleges of Chicago. Having been guided directly by QuestBridge through the college admissions process many years ago, Vi was excited to come full circle in 2017 to lead QuestBridge’s data science team.
When not immersed in ideas related to data, technology, and students’ thriving, Vi is working on creative family projects—a collection of family recipes with her brother, and a bilingual children’s book with her mom. Thanks to the support of friends, Vi and her mom are bringing their first book to market later this year: Why Toads Rule The Sky, a Vietnamese folktale never before told in English and Vietnamese!