Dedication

This book is dedicated to our classmate Kien Pham, who has shown us what it means to be a guiding light and how one person can make the world a better place. We collectively wish Kien many more years of health and look forward to him continuing to shine a bright light on us all.

I encourage the reader to read the amazing chapters about Kien submitted by Walt Spevak, Joe Tye, and Andy Drexler.

I am grateful to Anne Casscells and Nancy Glaser (great success stories in their own right) who volunteered a few of their thoughts, and here they are.

Anne

One of the most remarkable people in our GSB class of 1985 was Kien Pham, though I did not know that at the time, and truthfully, I hardly knew Kien. That all changed in 2011 when Kien took a group of GSB classmates to Vietnam. When Kien announced that he wanted to take a group of us to see “his” Vietnam, I thought it would be fun. I didn’t realize how the trip would take me back through history while giving me an amazing lesson in resiliency, compassion and grace.

Having signed up just for the experience of seeing Vietnam and traveling with classmates, we landed in Ho Chi Minh City (aka Saigon) just in time for the annual celebration of the “liberation” of the south by North Vietnamese forces in April 1975. As we toured the American embassy, from which helicopters evacuated desperate people in the last moments, we started to learn about Kien’s family and their escape after the takeover.

A day later, Kien took us down to the Mekong Delta and showed us the place along the riverbed where he and his family hid in 1977 while waiting for the boat that was going to take them. Kien, who was about 19 at the time, was left in charge of the family while his father secured the boat. This was their third attempt to escape. This was where I learned that, after escaping on the boat, they spent months floating on the ocean – refugees waiting for another country to welcome them. Those of us in the class of 1985 were too young to fight in what we call The Vietnam War, but we remember the Boat People of the late 1970’s, the refugees from South Vietnam cast adrift. Ultimately, after a stay in a refugee camp, the Pham family was brought to the United States as refugees, sponsored by a family from a church in Colorado.

Naturally, Kien wanted to thrive in the U.S. and to make his father proud, which in his eyes required him to get a PhD degree. Kien had other ideas and came to Stanford to get his MBA, but to placate his father, he worked on a separate Master’s degree while we were in school. No wonder I didn’t know him. He was studying all the time!

But there was another thing that kept Kien apart from us and from the world. He had learned he was slowing going blind, having developed a disease of the retina that perhaps was related to the months they spend floating on a crowded boat in the ocean. Kien had to work even harder in school because his faltering eyesight made studying harder. He also kept his disability a secret from his family for a long time, fearing to disappoint them given how much they had sacrificed to make life possible for him and his siblings.

Kien graduated with his two degrees and went off to Washington DC, where he was a White House Fellow. He then pursued a corporate career at various companies before becoming an entrepreneur and returning to Vietnam. Despite the hardships in his life caused by the war and its aftermath, Kien bore no resentment and was inspired to help his former country. He started a non-profit foundation to benefit orphans, build schools and fund scholarships there. His amazing wife is actually the daughter of a former officer in the North Vietnam military, the same people whose victory in 1975 made Kien’s family flee. They lived in Hanoi at the time of our trip and showed us their beautiful city and their beautiful (and sassy) children, all born in time for their father to be able to see them while he still has some vision left.

Kien brought us to Vietnam because he wanted us to see it through his eyes. Here is what I think he meant by that. Kien wanted us to see a young and vibrant country that was just beginning to grow its economy. The average age in Vietnam was 30, meaning that most people had no memory of the war with America, and amazingly they had very warm feeling for Americans. He wanted us to see entrepreneurs and people who aspire to a better life. That is what he wanted us to learn.

What I learned came not from seeing Vietnam, but from getting to know Kien. I would have thought that a refugee driven from his country would be filled with bitterness towards those who had taken away his family’s home, especially given the likelihood that the ordeal is connected with his oncoming blindness, but that is not Kien. Kien is full of compassion; he has forgiven everyone who has ever done him wrong. He is determined to help Vietnam, both to create a bright future, but also to help heal the lingering wounds of the war, such as children who have disabilities due to the environmental damage left by things like agent orange, or those who have lost limbs due to bombs left over from the war, which are still buried in fields and sometimes explode.

As someone who came back to my faith later in life, I thought I knew something about forgiveness and grace, but spending an afternoon alone with Kien made me realize I had a lot to learn. Whether it is despite the adversity he has faced, or because of it, he is a remarkable person who looks forward and not past, who focuses on others and not on himself. He is and inspiration and one of the most remarkable and successful members of our class.

Nancy

I was one lucky person when I signed up for this extraordinary trip to Vietnam planned and led by Kien in the spring of 2011. It was wonderful in the way only Kien could do – covering the entire north and south geography, meeting his family and friends, visiting the historic sites, learning the long and hard history, but also being introduced to the recipients and staff of his foundation, The Vietnam Foundation. At this point, we learned how one lives a generous life. Kien has supported so many in the country of his birth.

I remember meeting Kien in 1984 when we were both planning on working on a SMIF Grant in Thailand over the summer quarter between our first and second in at the GSB. It was then that I heard the story of how he narrowly escaped South Vietnam with his family as “boat people” and immigrated to the U.S. through the sponsorship of a Colorado community in 1977. That was an amazing story. I could not imagine how only seven years later he was my GSB classmate!

Although we worked in different areas of Thailand over the summer of 1984, Kien would come to Bangkok, where I was living, from time to time. I learned more of his amazing life and it was then I knew I was friends with an extraordinary human being.

I am honored to call Kien my friend and by living his life for others, he has inspired me to take advantage of my privilege to be the best person I can be. For this I thank you, Kien Pham!

And this from Ken Rock

I remember getting to know Kien during our first year at the GSB. The things I recall most clearly from our early interactions were his warm greetings and always crisp humor. Of course, he also had a pretty amazing story of how he got to the U.S. I was fortunate to be able to reconnect with Kien shortly after business school when he was selected as a White House Fellow and moved to the Washington, D.C. area.

A few years after business school, Kien was working at the Pentagon and agreed to host an event for the Washington, D.C. / Baltimore GSB alumni. Kien was working for high-level DoD leaders and was able to get our group of about twenty alums access to a special room that featured all the latest and greatest communications equipment and security features. Kien shared some good stories about working directly for the Secretary of Defense.

In 2010, Kien planned and organized a tour through Vietnam on a trip for about 25 GSB classmates that proved to be a wonderful experience. He would provide daily commentary about sites we would visit and was very open in sharing memories about growing up in Vietnam and how he became a refugee.

Although we had an excellent, mandatory, government-provided guide, Kien’s comments always seemed more penetrating and relevant than those of our “official” guide. The two of them seemed to get along great despite Kien’s comments that occasionally included a critique of the government. I know that the experience was quite special for my wife Betsy and me. I am also quite confident that all of the participants enjoyed a feeling of affection, trust, and respect from our classmates and friends who still ask good questions and enjoy learning new things.

Kien is deeply committed to following his inner compass. As Kien says, it is “the little red compass that always points to the north, no matter how we toss and turn. Armed with such inner compass, my life had direction.” Kien has written that in his work life, he has “walked the large marble halls of the U.S. Congress, the narrow quiet corridors of the White House, the cushy carpeted floors of large corporations, the rocky uncharted trails of startups, the dirt roads of charities, as well as the lofty and idealistic paths of non-profits. Yes, I have made many sharp turns, but was never lost because at each turn, I always checked my inner compass to see which way the red needle was pointing.” All along these pathways, he always paid attention to purpose, passion, and principle in his life, which led to amazing success.

Perhaps most notable is Kien’s strong commitment to philanthropy. Among other accomplishments, Kien founded the Vietnam Foundation which provides healthcare, social assistance, and scholarships to poor and handicapped people in Vietnam. We visited a school he built in Vietnam which supports the visually impaired. His words and actions inspire many others to support his worthy causes. As an indication of Kien’s many accomplishments and role as a bridge-builder, he was honored by Stanford University as one of the “100 Most Outstanding Alumni” in the first 100 years of the school.

I also met Kien and his wife in D.C. a few years ago for dinner with a larger group. This visit was near the end of a lengthy vacation and he gave my wife and me a bag of Vietnamese peanuts. But he added that he was glad to finally get rid of these damned nuts because he’d been carrying them around for so long and his suitcase was full!

One final note about Kien’s humor. In the middle of our GSB ’85 Vietnam trip, we met to relax on the beach one beautiful afternoon in Da Nang. With a gentle breeze blowing and perfect weather, Kien got the group together to make a suggestion – that he collect everyone’s passport, and BURN them!