Bick Huynh was born and raised in Gò Vấp, Vietnam. After attempting to leave the country twice before, her family was able to successfully leave the country in 1982. They ended up in Indonesia and Singapore before arriving in the United States. Huynh and her family lived in Minnesota and California before moving to Portland. In California, Huynh attended UCLA and community college for her bachelor’s degree. At UCLA, she was a part of the Vietnamese Student Association. She decided to move to Oregon in 1996 to be with her husband at the time. She first lived in Beaverton, and then moved to the Hollywood District in Portland. At the time of this interview, she was enrolled in an online graduate program at Harvard, and was working to design a system that converts cryptocurrency into currency that nonprofits can use to donate to other nonprofits.

In this interview, Huynh discusses the history, politics, and language of Vietnam. She recounts some of her memories of Vietnam before leaving, and her experiences of returning and visiting. She describes her early years of growing up in Minnesota and California and the class and race structures that she has experienced living in different parts of the United States. She also discusses Vietnamese and refugee communities. She concludes by sharing about raising her children in Portland and the experiences they have had in the Portland Public School District.

Since the interview, Huynh has created a nonprofit organization called Society Organizing Sustainability (https://sosnonprofit.org/) and testified in favor of Oregon HB2231, which was passed in 2021. She is also a pilot student and takes lessons when she has the time.