Christine Truong's ('24) name in Vietnamese, Minh Tam, means "bright heart."
And she definitely lives up to her name.
While studying supply chain management and operations at the G. Brint Ryan College of Business, she was using those studies to help provide food, supplies and educational opportunities to young girls in her native Vietnam as part of the organization she founded, She Inspires Me.
She will now pursue her Ph.D. at Penn State University, with the goal of becoming a professor and making education accessible in developing countries.
Truong was 19 years old when she founded the organization in 2018. "When I first started, a lot of people told me that I'm too young. Many people told me I was too young to handle such significant challenges. Delivering supplies to mountainous areas isn't easy. But God helped me. I met amazing mentors and donors that are willing to help and guide me through hardship," says Truong, who is now 24. "Seeing the kids' smiles after receiving our gifts and enjoying our projects gives me the strength to keep going. The responsibility of being a founder has motivated me to be more resilient."
While she was attending college in Vietnam, Truong served as an English teacher and teaching assistant in Da Nang.
She also was working for the Japanese-based nonprofit JUNKO Da Nang Association, which helps the youth in Vietnam, and interned at UNICEF Vietnam.
Many Vietnamese lack access to education and transportation on the country's mountainous, unpaved roads.
At the age of 11 or 12, girls often are forced into child marriage, human trafficking or work instead of going to school.
For its first project, She Inspires Me partnered with JUNKO and local pharmacists to deliver medicine, toiletries and food. She Inspires Me has grown to run five main projects -- a supermarket for children, family visits, menstrual and hygiene workshops, water and clothing solutions, and scholarships. The organization has offered more than 800 scholarships.
Its 84 volunteers visit families in villages in the northeast and central regions of Vietnam to assess their needs. During one visit in 2018, Truong and the volunteers brought food and school supplies to a family of six, which included a 12-year-old girl who always dreamt of being a doctor, but was forced to drop out of school for an arranged child marriage.
"She pulled my shirt and she told me, 'Sister, you inspire me,'" she says. "You see the light in her eyes."
"She Inspires Me is actually all about the magic of logistics and supply chain, especially humanitarian logistics," Truong says. "One of the biggest challenges that we perceived was the lack of transportation, paved roads and accessibility to clean water."
Founding the organization motivated Truong to apply for college in the U.S. to study logistics. She transferred to UNT four years ago, where she researched supply chain resilience for unmanned aircraft vehicles.
She presented her work at the NASA Better Together Conference in 2023 and UNT's Research Day. She also served as president of the UNT Logistics and Supply Chain Organization and received the 2023 Student of the Year award from the Association for Supply Chain Management North Texas Chapter.
Truong is driven by her passion -- but she's also very disciplined. She uses Notion templates and Microsoft Teams nonprofit hub to organize her projects.
While her friends are hanging out, she's working on She Inspires Me.
"I stumble a lot," she admits. "It's not easy, but it's very rewarding. There's nothing quite like witnessing the dedication, hard work and growth of your amazing team. As a student researcher and founder implementing a humanitarian logistics system, I've had the privilege of seeing things from a unique perspective, fostering creativity, prudence and effectiveness. Thanks to She Inspires Me, my youth has gained profound meaning. This is my life mission."
