Thuy-Doan Le sports a daring, take-life-by-the-horns attitude, which exemplifies the strength of Vietnamese American women in the media. She is a freelance writer in Orange County, CA. Formerly a business reporter
at The Sacramento Bee, Le has also worked for the Hartford Courant in Connecticut and The Los Angeles Times, where she started as a community news reporter and later joined the Minority Editorial Training Program.

She’s written stories on Tet, the Fall of Saigon and the Vietnamese community. Most recently, she spent nearly a year helping with research and translation on a series about a group of boat people from Hue.

Le is a graduate from the University of Southern California’s Annenberg School of Communications. She also has a degree in English Literature.

One year, while studying at the University of Sussex in the United Kingdom, she hitchhiked twice in London. She was grounded in Paris, France, for a week when her Sept. 11, 2001 flight back to the U.S. was cancelled. Last year, after spending a month backpacking through Viet Nam, from Sapa to Saigon, she was briefly stranded on Phu Quoc Island because of a storm.

Le plans to live abroad and teach English in Viet Nam. On being Vietnamese, Le says, “I am grateful for the duality of two cultures: as Vietnamese and as American.” She believes it’s important to keep traditional values and work ethics.