Sandy Thảo Ninh was born in 1991 in California to a family of Vietnamese immigrants. She attended the University of California Irvine and then the Pacific University School of Pharmacy. She works as an inpatient pharmacist at Adventist Health. While she originally planned to move back to California after completing her pharmacy degree, her involvement in the Vietnamese Community in Portland encouraged her to stay in Oregon.
In this interview, she describes how her family immigrated to the United States from Saigon. She reflects on growing up in California and the large Vietnamese community there, including her participation in the Vietnamese Student Association at the University of California Irvine. She continues on to describe her experience as a student at Pacific University and how she became involved with the Vietnamese community in Portland by volunteering at the Vietnamese Community Health Fair with a friend. She describes the gradual process of understanding her family’s history as she grew up and highlights the importance of embracing both parts of her Vietnamese American identity. She concludes the interview with a discussion of the importance of encouraging the youth to learn Vietnamese and encouraging older generations to understand that the younger generations are part of two cultures, both Vietnamese and American.