Photo Credit: Les Talusan

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Pronouns: she/her

Tuyet Duong has spent two decades championing human rights, civil rights, equity, and economic justice issues. Most recently, she served in the Management and Public Diplomacy Sections of U.S. Embassy Seoul, building community programs and supporting strategic planning efforts on democracy, security, economy, and human rights. She earned three meritorious awards for her service. 

As the first Visiting Fellow focused on language access at the Office for Victims of Crime at the U.S. Department of Justice, Tuyet spearheaded the development of the office’s first grant and training programs for culturally specific organizations to advance equal access for Deaf, hard of hearing, and limited English proficient individuals. Prior to that, Tuyet served in the Obama Administration where she oversaw public private partnerships and economic engagement at the White House Initiative on Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders. 

At the beginning of Tuyet’s career, she led the language access and equity response for BPSOS-Houston, coordinating a historic disaster response operation to assist Hurricane Katrina Southeast Asian evacuees. After this, she joined the advocacy team of Asians Advancing Justice – AAJC, where she led national coalition efforts to introduce federal legislation to fix family immigration backlogs and she also supported the first meetings of the New Orleans Language Access Coalition. Her advocacy for and with Gulf Coast Southeast Asian communities culminated in a year long response effort to the British Petroleum (BP) oil spill, where her internal engagement and policy work to ensure that immigrant shrimpers had access to relief funds and state legislative processes earned her the Department of Homeland Security Civil Rights and Civil Liberties Officer’s Inaugural Distinguished Award of Merit. 

Tuyet has adjunct teaching experience at the University of Maryland, teaching Asian American Studies, and at George Mason University Korea’s Peace and Conflict Resolution Center, coaching students on conflict resolution. She has conducted numerous national and local training on Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, language access, immigration, and equity. 

She received her Bachelor’s Degree in English from the University of Texas and Juris Doctor from the University of Texas School of Law. She lives with her partner, three boys, and her mother-in-law in Virginia and is a second generation Vietnamese American.