MY LAN TRAN

During the past 12 years, My Lan Tran has led an organization giving a voice to more than 187,000 Asian American-owned enterprises in Virginia: the Virginia Asian Chamber of Commerce. The chamber’s executive director, she also is administrator of the Virginia Asian Foundation, a nonprofit organization that helps develop educational programming for Asian American and Pacific Islanders with eight member universities in Virginia.

Tran came to the United States in April 1975 as a refugee from South Vietnam, earned degrees from Bridgewater State University in Massachusetts and Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey in California, and pursued careers in workforce and economic development.

From 2003 to 2011, Tran served as program manager for Richmond’s Office of Minority Business Development, where she helped pilot a program in which more than 5,000 small, women-, minority- or veteran-owned businesses received business development services. She also was international trade marketing manager for the Virginia Economic Development Partnership, and Tran taught Asian political theory, contemporary studies, international affairs and French at Virginia Commonwealth University for several years.

For nearly two decades, Tran has advised more than a dozen regional and state institutions on energy, transportation, higher education, community development, workforce development, economic development, minority business development and housing.

The thread throughout her experience, however, is being “laser-focused on promoting Virginia minority business development, especially working on behalf of the underserved Asian American communities and all others who are underserved and under-recognized,” she says.

Read more about the 2023 class of Virginia Business Women in Leadership Award winners.