In this episode of OneHaas, meet alumna Tricia Tran, Senior Field Marketing Manager of the financial services and Fintech group at ServiceNow. She’s also the founding co-President of the Berkeley Haas Women in a leadership Alumnae network.
A child of Vietnamese immigrant parents, Tricia grew up in the Bay Area with her heart set on one day attending UC Berkeley. Her family instilled strong values of education and hard work in her from a young age.
Host Sean Li chatted with Tricia during Women’s History Month. The pair discuss Tricia’s amazing story of emigrating to the U.S. from Vietnam as a baby and the challenges her family faced along the way. They also chat about her experiences working as an Asian American woman in Asia vs. the U.S. and the alumnae group she started for Haas women called Women in Leadership (WILA).
*OneHaas Alumni Podcast is a production of Haas School of Business and is produced by University FM.*
Episode Quotes:
On the challenges her parents faced when trying to leave Vietnam
“It was one of those moments where the decisions you make will alter your life. My dad had the choice to either keep waiting and risk the months of planning to get caught, and not be able to escape or leave for freedom and risk never seeing his wife and his daughter possibly ever again.”
How her parents adapted to their new life in the U.S.
“She learned how to cook and she learned it by memory. She remembered the flavors of the dishes that she had in Vietnam and she recreated those from memory. They both had several careers in restaurants, in condiments, in the steel business, in jewelry. There were several businesses that they had and I saw them pivot and try new things, and have success and sometimes failures, but they always learned from that.”
Her experience working in Asia vs. the U.S.
“Even though I was working in a key hub for Asia, like Hong Kong, you looked around and there were a lot of people of Asian ethnicity working there, but none in leadership. And in fact, when I interviewed with the head of our group, who was a Westerner from the UK, she remarked in awe, she said, ‘You speak beautiful English.’ When you feel that you are Asian, but you're also American, there's all these facets of you. You're a woman, and you go to a different country with a different background and people have these biases and they have these assumptions and it's important, I think, but hard to call those out, right?”
On the creation of WILA
“I was struggling professionally and personally, and I wanted a space where I could seek out other Haas women who I knew could understand and provide some perspective. I knew I wasn't alone in feeling this. And today, WILA is thriving and we continue to serve our mission.”
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