Southeast Asia
Nhat-Hang Claire Duong: From Vietnam to American Diplomacy
Evacuated from Saigon in April 1975 with the families of embassy staff; later a human resources adviser at State.
- Fled
- Vietnam
- Status
- Evacuated with families facing persecution (1975)
- Arrived in the U.S.
- 1975
- Service
- Strategic adviser, Bureau of Human Resources (from 2013)
- Region
- Southeast Asia
Claire Duong's father worked for the Defense Attaché at the U.S. Embassy in Saigon. On April 21, 1975, as the U.S. government quietly evacuated the families of local staff who would face persecution under the Communists, her family was flown out of Tan Son Nhut airport. She spent about two weeks on Guam among other refugee children before the family resettled in the United States.
She studied industrial engineering at Virginia Tech, spent twenty years at the Department of Defense, and joined the Department of State in 2013 as a strategic adviser in the Bureau of Human Resources.
Read the history behind this story on the Vietnam page, or browse all the diplomats.