Dr. Nguyen Dinh Thang
Executive Director, Boat People SOS (BPSOS)

Dr. Thang arrived in the United States in 1979, as a boat refugee from Vietnam. In 1986, he graduated from Virginia Tech with a Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering. He also holds an M.S. degree in Electrical and Electronic Engineering from Johns Hopkins University. For 13 years, he worked as an engineer and a quality control manager at a research lab in Bethesda, Maryland. He holds several patents and has received numerous performance awards. Joining BPSOS in 1988 as a volunteer, he left his engineer job in 2001 to become BPSOS’ full-time Executive Director.

Dr. Thang is well known for his vision and bold actions. Responding to the boat people crisis in 1989, he established Legal Assistance for Vietnamese Asylum Seekers (LAVAS), which set up legal aid offices in the Philippines (1991) and Hong Kong (1992) to defend the refugee rights of the Vietnamese boat people. In 1995, he launched an advocacy campaign that resulted in the resettlement of over 18,000 former boat people from Vietnam to the US under the Resettlement Opportunity for Vietnamese Returnees Program. He has successfully championed the establishment and re-opening of several refugee programs such as the Priority One In-Country Refugee Program, the Humanitarian Resettlement Program, and the “Davis” Amendment. Since 2001, he has advocated for the Amerasians’ right to US citizenship. Ten years after the official end of the Vietnamese boat people era, he continues to defend the rights of Vietnamese to refugee protection. Since 2007, he has traveled frequently to Southeast Asia to advocate for and provide assistance to hundreds of Vietnamese asylum seekers in Thailand, Malaysia and Cambodia, who fled the mounting crackdown in Vietnam.

To help the Vietnamese American community cope with the impacts of the 1996 welfare and immigration reforms, in 1997, he set out to build BPSOS from a small, all-volunteer organization into a national one that operates a dozen programs in 15 different locations nationwide. He developed BPSOS’ vast network of mass media that includes print, radio and television. This network has the capacity to reach one in every four Vietnamese households in the US.

In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, Dr. Thang successfully mobilized the resources of the Southeast Asian communities to provide emergency relief to thousands of Vietnamese victims in Houston and along the Gulf Coast. From this effort, he developed an emergency preparedness and disaster response program that continues to help victims of hurricanes Rita, Gustav and Ike and prepare communities for human made or natural disasters.

Under his leadership, BPSOS became one of the leading anti-trafficking in persons organization not only in the US but in the world. He has personally worked on high-profile trafficking cases, from the largest case ever prosecuted by the US federal government (Daewoosa American Samoa, 1999) to the recent rescue of 176 Vietnamese women workers in Jordan. Most notably, in March 2008, he coordinated a highly effective campaign to force a clothing giant to agree to compensate 2,600 workers, half being Vietnamese, in Malaysia. In early 2008, he co-founded Coalition to Abolish Modern-day Slavery in Asia (CAMSA). This coalition, in conjunction with a local organization, has set up permanent operation in Malaysia. Within six months of operation, CAMSA’s effective work was recognized by both the White House and the State Department in November 2008.

Dr. Thang is an effective advocate of human rights and social justice. He co-founded the Committee for Religious Freedom in Vietnam in 1998. He established the first and only center for Vietnamese torture survivors in 2002. He has testified numerous times before Congress and edits the annual Vietnam Country Report. He trains human rights advocates in different countries. He is also an effective community organizer, having mentored over 50 organizations and raised over $2M to support their good work.

Dr. Thang is a regular contributor to a dozen of Vietnamese-language newspapers and magazines around the country. He has co-authored a series of articles on programs and services for immigrants, and on victims of torture. He has contributed articles to the Washington Post, San Jose Mercury News, Houston Chronicle, Asian Wall Street Journal, Seattle Times, etc. and has been featured on U.S. and international programs such as ABC Nightline, Voice of America, Australian Broadcasting Corporation, British Broadcasting Corporation, Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, Radio Free Asia.

In 2001, the Washingtonian Magazine named Dr. Thang, “Washingtonian of the Year”. He was a fellow in the Drucker Foundation's Frances Hesselbein Community Innovation Fellows Program for 2001-2002. He received the 2003 Outstanding Technology Leadership Award from the Education Technology Think Tank and Black Congressional Caucus. He was also a fellow at the Center for Social Innovation at Stanford University Graduate School of Business. He currently serves on the Access for All Advisory Committee to the National Capital Region Transportation Planning Board and on the Participatory Action Research Team of Howard University Center for Disability and Socioeconomic Policy Studies.

In 2005, National Alliance of Vietnamese American Service Agencies selected him for its annual Community Service Award. In 2006 the Asian Pacific American Society awarded him its Community Service Award for his work in the Gulf Coast. He is the 2007 recipient of Community Service Award from the Asian Pacific American Bar Association Education Fund. In 2008 he was honored with a lifetime service award by the National Congress of Vietnamese Americans. In 2009 he was selected for a lifetime achievement award by Southeast Asia Resource Action Center.

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