Migrant background a ‘superpower’ for young leader

Nguyen, 23, is weeks away from completing the Institute of Community Directors Australia (ICDA) Diploma of Governance.

The course, for which she won a scholarship for emerging leaders under 30, has helped her refine her sense of her leadership style and purpose.

Born in Vietnam and raised in Melbourne’s northeastern suburbs from the age of four, Nguyen said she had inherited a strong sense of the value of community service from her culture, but had also grown up with a sense of being different.

“In Vietnamese culture, it’s very strongly collectivist. You rarely think about yourself as an individual. Instead, it’s always in relation to others.”

She excelled academically at high school, attending Ivanhoe Grammar in Melbourne’s inner north on a scholarship; at the same time, her family instilled in her the value of “making the world a better place”. Nguyen has carried this into service with the Army cadets, a role as school captain, tutoring others, volunteering in a community kitchen, and policymaking internships in the offices of the Prime Minister and the Victorian Premier.

With her keen interest in people, Nguyen topped her human geography class at Melbourne University. She recently accepted an associate role at Boston Consulting Group and plans to balance her first full-time job with her volunteer commitments.

Nguyen addresses fellow students during her graduation ceremony.

“I'm geared towards thinking, ‘How can I use my opportunities to make the life of others – not just people, but all creatures in the world – better?’”

This explains her long-term involvement with 300 Blankets, a homelessness support agency that aims to build dignity by providing food, shelter and services.

She’s been with the organisation ever since she was introduced to it at school, and she currently serves as a volunteer manager and helps in the Soul Kitchen, which offers free meals and community connection each Sunday in Melbourne’s west.

She’s made great friends at the service and believes these social connections are one of the reasons its volunteers stay.

Nguyen encourages other young people to step up into leadership, and to accept every challenge as a learning experience.

She’s learned what it means to “lead from the back” at places such as 300 Blankets, she’s taken on the lessons of top-down military structure in Army cadets, and she’s tuning her governance skills at the youth-focused social enterprise STREAT, where she’s been a director since 2024.

Nguyen has been a director with social enterprise STREAT since last year.

Nguyen said the ICDA Diploma of Governance had helped her to be “grounded” and more confident when stepping into the board room. Asked to nominate the course module that had had the strongest impact on her, she named “communicating with influence”.

That module teaches students about stakeholder communication strategy, and Nguyen took the opportunity of speaking with Community Directors Intelligence to communicate to emerging leaders how they too could step up.

She urged other people her age “to be brave, to put yourself out there.”

She said she had overcome “imposter syndrome” and attempts to imitate others’ leadership styles, instead developing her own.

“I’ve switched to thinking, ‘Okay, well, if that [style] doesn't work, then this is an opportunity for me to figure out what does work rather than just shutting it down and quitting.”

That self awareness has helped Nguyen to realise that her identity and lived experience are powerful assets in her leadership toolkit.

“I feel very grateful to have been able to figure out what life is like in Australia and to grow up here. But I still do think about the differences as well … because you grow up here and you [think] ‘I don't really fit in’ or ‘My perspectives aren't the dominant perspective.’

“There aren't many people that look like me in leadership positions that I've seen, but at the same time I knew that I couldn't act like everyone else, because of the way that I look: things are received differently. But I think over time, I've learned that my diversity is a bit of a superpower.”

While Nguyen’s personal mission is still evolving, she knows that she can always seek support among the many Community Directors students she has connected with.

“I know that I could reach out to any of them if I needed anything or wanted to learn about any of their particular sectors.”

Her experience, study and self review have led Nguyen to favour “leading from the back” and collaborating with others, rather than issuing top-down orders in the style of Army cadets leaders.

“I think it's naive to think that any leader can do anything on their own, because the leader is nothing unless they have other people in support.”

She wants to “unlock the potential” of others by identifying abilities and skills they may not even be aware of.

“I've done a lot of thinking about this, and it's changed at many points of my life. I've stepped back from having a prescriptive goal – like a position – to now just an overall goal. And it's wherever I end up, I know that I just want to do work that makes things better for the world and to ‘bring up’ people around me.”

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