After receiving my doctorate in community psychology and acquiring over a decade of domestic and international experience as a community development practitioner, I joined the Center for Health Policy and Inequalities Research (CHPIR) at Duke University as a community psychologist researcher and practitioner.

As a community psychologist, I am someone who tries to embody and advocate for community mental health and community care into research, policy, and practice, in support of marginalized communities faced with the greatest mental health inequities.

 Much of my research interests go beyond an individual focus to integrate more community- and systems- level influences into intervention strategies that promote mental health and well-being, particularly for marginalized youth and young adult populations such as orphaned and separated children, immigrant/refugee youth, youth of color, and LGBTQ youth and young adults in low- and middle- resource contexts.

My work as a community psychologist practitioner both deeply informs my research and vice versa, which takes shape in the form of facilitating mental health therapy groups and mindfulness trainings, advising programs on community-based leadership, and co-creating and adapting mental health interventions to be more culturally salient for the local and global BIPOC and LGBTQ+ community.

All of this is folded into my teaching at Duke University, where I aim to foster critical consciousness and academic activism and advocacy on topics such as ethical community-engaged research and practice, migrant and refugee health, LGBTQ health, and Asian American mental health.

 In addition to academic teaching, I'm also a Buddhist meditation and mindfulness meditation teacher. I've been studying and practicing vipassana (insight) meditation for 15 years, and did much of my early training in rich Buddhist cultural contexts in Vietnam, Cambodia, and Thailand. I had the privilege of residing in close proximity to the home temple of my ancestor, Thích Nhất Hạnh, in Hue, Vietnam, where I dedicated a significant portion of my time to practice.

Currently, I lead and facilitate meditation groups and retreats catered to the queer and trans / QTBIPOC / and QTAAPI communities, both in Durham, NC and beyond. I hope to someday lead meditation retreats back in Vietnam, near Thích Nhất Hạnh's home temple.

The way that I show up in the world is deeply shaped by the influence and inspiration drawn from my Vietnamese lineages, Buddhist teachers, as well as my queer and trans ancestors. All of these teachers and ancestors have fought for and made room for me to exist, and have demonstrated beautiful, alternative ways of loving and caring for one another.