What made you start your own business?

Growing up in South Vietnam, a young county struggling for democracy, owning a business was an unthinkable dream for me. I worked many jobs to survive while trying to learn anything available. The only way to have a better life was to get a good education. With much help from a few good individuals, free antibiotics and a scholarship from U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), I was fortunate to be able to get multiple higher education degrees. With my degrees, I was fortunate to have a respectable career in education and in the field of development and to have opportunities to continue researching and studying while working. However, my experience of working in over thirty countries taught me that technical knowledge and dedication alone are insufficient to help others help themselves. I must have additional capital investment to implement my know-how in development to create a socio-economic model that works as I envision it. It is like having a bus and being able to drive, but without gas I cannot get passengers to the destination. I then set everything aside and accepted the challenge of being an entrepreneur so that I could get gas to fuel the bus.

I can now join with others in the near future to invest my knowledge and capital in realizing my dream of creating a real-time socio-economic development model using a system approach and scientific and socio-economic solutions to reverse the vicious cycle of poverty into a prosperity cycle.

What makes you so passionate about your business?

I had already made up my mind about what to do with my life in my teenage years. As a teenager, I saw a little girl sitting by the side of a shallow drainage ditch next to a palm-leaf hut picking a piece of rotten watermelon skin out of the sewage water covered with black foam. She ate it. She was extremely emaciated, except her belly was swollen because of parasites. She was not clothed. I knew that she would not live for long and I felt pain and helplessness. I could hardly help myself then. There must be a better way somehow, somewhere, and someway. I determined that some day I would assist others to at least have food for good health and growth. Somehow, I have been able to follow the course of learning and working in fields relating to food, nutrition, people, and development. Just thinking about those goals that I am realizing causes the energy to flow in me. I can speak or write for days about this issue. So thanks to my wife and children, US Agency for International Development, University of Can Tho, University of Florida, California State University, Small Business Administration, one of the Rockefeller organizations, Department of Health and Human Services, friends, schools, and many more, for giving me the opportunity to be what and who I am today. This SBA award is a treasure for me and my family.

View more 2008 Award Winner Profiles

View all of the 2008 National Small Business Week Award Winners.