 Co-Chair
Thao Griffiths, Head of Public Policy, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, and Myanmar, META
Thao Griffiths has been actively involved in strengthening and deepening U.S.-Vietnam relations for more than 20 years. She has received personal commendations for her work from former U.S. President Bill Clinton, former U.S. Senate President Pro Tempore Patrick Leahy, and former U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, among many others.
Thao is a graduate of the Academy of Diplomacy of Vietnam and has Masters degrees from the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT) and American University in Washington, DC. She is a Fulbright Scholar, a Rotary Peace Fellow, and an Eisenhower Fellow.
Over more than two decades, Thao has become a familiar figure in the halls of Congress and U.S. government agencies as she assumed a professional and personal responsibility in bringing Vietnam and America closer together and dealing with war legacy issues, especially with the ongoing effects of Agent Orange and missing persons. In 2009, Thao became the first non-veteran, the first Vietnamese and the first woman to head the Vietnam Veterans of America Foundation in Vietnam (VVAF). As a result of her work, President Clinton in 2015 sent a personal letter of thanks to Thao, writing, “I am grateful for the work you are doing every day to promote peace and reconciliation.”
In 2017, Thao became Policy Advisor to Dr. Vu Tien Loc, the Chair of the Vietnam Chamber of Commerce and Industry (VCCI) and the longest serving member of the Vietnamese legislature. In this capacity, she worked closely with corporate America and the U.S. government on economic development, investment and climate change issues in Vietnam. She also continued to serve as an independent expert and advisor to various offices of the government of Vietnam on policy issues, particularly Agent Orange and missing persons.
In 2021, Thao was featured as one of “99 Outstanding Women of Vietnam” in the best-selling book, “We Are Vietnam,” written and photographed by one of Vietnam’s renowned photographers Mr Nguyen A. In 2016, the food broadcaster and writer Anthony Bourdain featured Thao along with visiting President Obama for his “Parts Unknown” program on CNN. In 2019, during the Hanoi summit meeting between President Trump and Kim Il Jong, the BBC turned to Thao for a live studio interview on how Vietnam’s journey of reconciliation with a former enemy might be a model for North Korea.
In 2021, Thao began working for Meta as the Head of Public Policy for Vietnam. She leads a country policy team that is dealing with some of the most interesting public policy challenges of our times including privacy, safety, freedom of expression and the intersection with technology. Concurrent with her work at Meta, Thao was appointed in December 2022 to the Board of Commissioners of the International Commission on Missing Persons (ICMP), based at The Hague, Netherlands.
Shortly before his retirement in January 2023, U.S. Senate President Pro Tempore and Vermont Senator Patrick Leahy introduced a “Tribute to Thao Griffiths” into the Congressional Record, which states in part (full text is available on request): “It would not be an exaggeration to say that none of the war legacy initiatives that have played such a central role in building a comprehensive partnership between the U.S. and Vietnam would have progressed as they have without Thao’s constant encouragement and thoughtful advice. … Her efforts have had a profound and lasting impact on our relations, our mutual understanding, and on the lives of the Vietnamese and American people.”
Thao is married to Dr. Patrick Griffiths. They have two children attending university in Australia. Thao loves to row, cycle, race dragon boats, and sing choral music. |
 Co-Chair
Tuoc Huynh, Country Manager, UL Solutions Vietnam
Tuoc Huynh leads UL Solutions for Vietnam, particularly UL’s business growth and development in the Vietnam market. In this capacity, he leads diverse business and operational teams with state-of-the-art testing laboratories in Hai Duong and Ho Chi Minh City to drive UL’s mission of working for a safer world, which is to promote safe, secure, and sustainable living and working environments for people by the application of science, hazard-based safety engineering, and data acumen. To support the production and use of physically and environmentally safe products and to apply our efforts to prevent or reduce loss of life and property.
Before joining UL Solutions, Tuoc came from a diverse background and experience with years in technology. As the first employee for Facebook in Vietnam beginning of 2011, he steered a global cross-functional team that successfully overcame the public policy headwind at a critical time which afforded Facebook Vietnam to become the fastest-growth market in the world in just 11 months. On the business front, he led Vietnam’s e-commerce program with a massive nationwide Facebook cross-border campaign beginning in early 2012 that would turn Vietnam into the #1 revenue generator in ASEAN by 2014 and outpace the combined business results from the Philippines, Singapore, and Malaysia. Later in 2016, he helped to expand Facebook’s unprecedented business growth in APAC by taking the regional lead in business development for Southeast Asia, which became the largest business subregion outside of the US. Before Facebook, Tuoc was the first Google employee in Vietnam and set up its overall presence and operation, which started in 2005, bringing both Google and YouTube from outside the top 15 to the top 1 and 2 in just 15 months. In terms of development, Tuoc led the localization of many of Google’s popular products like Google search, Gmail, Google Maps, Google Docs., etc.
Tuoc also worked in the early developmental stages of key industries like real estate in the highly acclaimed Phu My Hung (Saigon South) project and set up one of the first automobile factories in Vietnam with Mercedes-Benz.
Born in Vietnam and came of age in the last frontier state of Alaska and rugged hill countries in South Texas, Tuoc was appointed to be a coordinator in President Clinton’s AmeriCorps program that trains young leaders to help their community through conflict mediation, crime prevention, and economic revitalization in the inner cities of San Antonio.
Tuoc received a BA and an MBA from the University of Texas at San Antonio. |
 Vice Chair
Doan Huu Duc, Founder and Management Partner, Vietnam Consulting Group
Completing his short-term consulting role as a pathfinder for the USAID LEARNS project, Duc has consulted successfully and efficiently with all local stakeholders, governmental and private alike, on the design of Local Capacity Development activities. Assisting USAID partners at the Ministry of Planning and Investment (MPI), the National Innovation Center (NIC), Academy of Policy and Development (APD, Agency for Enterprise Development (AED)… in selected projects involving education/training, and private sectors.
Considered one of the prime candidates for “Missions Impossible” in Vietnam, Duc receives last-minute calls for help due to his extensive network with thousands of US Alumni in Vietnam (Fulbright, FETP, FUV, IFD, YSEALI…), quickly gather senior leaders and professionals from all provinces and major cities to participate in events. Effectively cooperate with USAID/MPI activities, from workshops for USAID/MPI leaders meeting with the local community to increase time limit and working with the right people to maximize the result with minimal resources.
Proofs can be seen in the recent 2022 USAID LCD project when Duc employed his networks and intelligence to manage and organize co-creation workshops with hundreds of provincial key stakeholders within days. In addition, advised USAID/MPI teams not to move forward to save face, costs, and efforts for the home delegates, just in time that “force majeure” submerged, and local once local leaders were not welcome or ready for activities.
Another project named his capability was the 2015 – 2017 ADB Startup Innovation. It did not satisfy balancing the HCMC Peoples Committee’s roles and benefits. Duc alone replaced the taskforce consulting team when the project deadline only had three months left to finalize its master plan. It took him only five weeks to complete the planning and get executive approval. He later was one of the six founding members of the Saigon Innovation Hub (SIHUB). 1999 – 2003 IFC Mekong Project Development Facility (MPDF) was desperately looking for local consultants working with small but growing businesses in the early time of the private sector. With the introduction of the Fulbright Duc recommended not only SGB from diversified industries such as PNJ, LacViet, Kinh Do… but also from major state-owned privatizing businesses like Saigon Tourist, Vietcombank, Quang Trung Software Park…; all become leaders in their industries nowadays. With this outcome, the MPDF director recognized his VCG as their best consulting firm.
Duc was also named the Mekong Delta Guru while teaming up with the Vietnam Chamber of Commerce in the 2003 GTZ Local Economic Development Project to coach many thousands of government officers and business leaders for more than a decade throughout Vietnam but had primarily focused on Mekong Delta on marketing places subject since then. This practice made Duc one of the most well-connected persons with Vietnamese authorities when hundreds of his students and trainees later moved on to be senior provincial leaders, while his Fulbright fellows at the same time became senior central government officers. During this time, Duc co-founded several clubs and associations with VCCI Mekong/Cantho and local People Committees to officialize his networking and grow his local community activities.
Also, for Mekong delta marketing, Duc started his chef club, the FoodLAB. It won the first prize at the Mekong Chef Contest 2015, qualifying for an appearance at the Global Cooking Contest. During this, Duc has a chance to renew the Vietnam marketing places program by focusing on ethnic culinary culture. Duc gathered a team of writers to publish a series of books with thousands of short stories about the Mekong Delta heritage in gastronomy and local people. He sponsors annual street food and folk cake festivals and competitions at universities. His company also provides resources to educate, promote and finance local women startups from their heritage food specialities.
Duc founded the Vietnam Consulting Group (VCG) in 2000 with a few US Ivy League graduates to fuel the development of the Vietnamese private sector, which included growing startups and privatizing State-owned enterprises. VCG provided personnel for the World Bank, IFC, UNDP, ILO, GTZ, ADB, USAID and the BIG 4 international consulting firms in local capacity-building projects. Under his leadership, VCG later expanded their services into outsourcing which allowed VCG to become the first and only non-banking company in Vietnam to start card services for 20+ leading Vietnam banks.
Duc recently became the Honorary Director for Innovation and Partnership at UNICEF VIETNAM in 2022 after a decade of working pro bono for the organization. He is also the co-founder of a few nonprofit societies, including HCMC Association of Consultants in Sciences, Technology and Management; the Mekong Delta Tourism Association; the Mekong Delta Specialties Club; the Saigon Times Business Club2030; the Tien Giang Business Club; the Catholic Family Business Club; the Vietnam International Alumni Club. All share the same mission regarding charitable activities, helping for decades to funnel millions of Dollars to go where most needed. Finally, Duc is the acting president of HCMC US Alumni Association, where he led the first Vietnam masks donation campaign among his US Alumni club for US people when Covid 19 started in March 2020.
His marketing career started at one of the first foreign joint ventures in Vietnam in 1988, promoting the first batch of XT8088 personal computers; then bio-fertilizers at a time when the whole country used only chemical fertilizers. He returned to his alma mater in 1992 and became a faculty member in the English department, where he then helped set up the first British Council English Resource Center. Later he took part in the establishment of the Faculty of Oriental Studies to fuel Vietnamese links with ASEAN countries. His last project at HCMCU, pre-US-travel, was developing and promoting the evening and weekend English Bachelors Degree program in the South to help more locals learn English – a success factor to get jobs and change their lives. His current project during the pandemic is bringing a UK E-learning platform into Vietnam, providing a low-cost online English learning program and matching tutors and learners – a digitally managed and operated service in the education sector.
In his joint academic career with the Harvard team during 1998-2003, Duc developed syllabus curricula, translated textbooks, wrote case studies, and started teaching Marketing courses at the HCMCU of Economics. His life experience makes him a contributor to the Handbook of Markets and Economies (M.E. Sharpe, 2007).
Duc gained his MBA in 1997 as the first Vietnamese Fulbright grantee at Kellogg (Northwestern University, USA). He did his practical training at the office of the late president Nelson Mandela, developing business incubator projects in Cape Town, South Africa, where he started interested in marketing effectiveness, the subject of his later life.
Duc has been awarded the 2019 VCCI President Medal of Entrepreneurship Development for his lifelong efforts in supporting local and international businesses fueling Vietnam emerging markets in the new millennium. He is also recognized as the top honoured alumnus upon HCMCU’s 60th anniversary in 2017. Internationally, Duc represented in “Who’s Who 2003”. His company, the Vietnam Consulting Group, was awarded the Saigon Times CSR Company for Sustainability of the Year 2020. |
Vice Chair & Legal Advisor
Chung Seck, Partner, Baker McKenzie Vietnam Ltd.
Seck Yee Chung leads the Firm’s Mergers & Acquisitions, IT/C and Healthcare practices in Vietnam. He is highly regarded in his field – Chambers and Asia Pacific Legal 500 rank him as a leading lawyer in the field of Corporate/M&A and TMT.
Chung has worked in Vietnam since 1999 and has been involved in significant cross-border transactions. He delivers sound and pragmatic advice on regulatory and transactional matters, particularly on foreign investment, market access, private and public M&A, securities, competition and anti-corruption, commercial activities, and data use, over a diverse range of sectors, from digital economy, healthcare, and consumer products, to food & beverage, manufacturing, property, and aviation.
He is a member of the Law Society of Singapore and serves as Vice President of the Singapore Business Group, Ho Chi Minh City. |
 Board Liaison
Winnie Wong, Country Manager, Vietnam, Cambodia & Laos, Asia Pacific, Mastercard
Winnie Wong is responsible for growing Mastercard’s business in Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos. With her experience in consumer and corporate payments and banking, she brings a fresh perspective to the markets on digital payments and solutions.
Prior to her current role, Winnie was the Commercial B2B Sales Head for the region, where she was responsible for driving growth for Mastercard’s Business-to-Business (B2B) solutions across Asia Pacific. This includes working with governments, banks and corporations on trade digitization with the aim of improving efficiency and transparency, especially for cross-border trade. |
