Moments That Make Us: Amanda Nguyen on Dreaming Big and Finding Common Ground

When I graduated and decided to become an activist, my parents were not happy about that. But after I was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize, they were fine. I just took that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Last year, I started a conversation about life's turning points. This season, we're talking about what comes next, the next day, and beyond. I'm Melinda French-Gates. These are The Moments That Make Us. Amanda, thanks for joining me here today. I'm so glad we could do this. Thank you for having me. You are now an author and a survivor, and you've been to space. I thought maybe we would start by taking you back a little bit to your growing up journey, because you've said that you came from a very powerful lineage of women. I know your dad was part of the royal family. I know your mom came from a farm. Explain what you mean about that, and then also, who were some of your role models that you looked to growing up? Yeah, it was really an experience to grow up within the dichotomy of one side of the family experiencing this very public lineage of powerful women. My great, great, great seven times removed aunt was the empress in the Nguyen dynasty. And then on my mom's side, they were rural farmers in Vietnam. And both of their journeys as refugees are parts of me that have informed who I am. I think one of the greatest things that I've been able to feel gratitude for is to understand that being able to be powerful or be able to speak up for what you care about comes in different forms. It can take the form as somebody who wants to serve their community. And it can also take the form of being brave enough to take a boat refugee exodus. And what did having this lineage of powerful women, I mean, it takes courage to get on a boat, right, and become a refugee in a brand new country. What did having these powerful women as you looked back on it, how did that inform, do you think, your journey? I mean, because you've ended up in places, we all end up in places we never expect. You've ended up, which we'll get to, in some very unexpected places. But how did having those powerful women, do you think, inform your own journey? The first lesson and greatest lesson in bravery that I've had are from my mom, from my aunt, from these women in my life. For me, courage and bravery isn't about having no fear. It's about having that fear, recognizing it, but still being able to go through the process anyways. My mom and my aunt were on the boat. And their boat was sinking because they were caught in a tidal wave storm. Wow. Yeah. And she tells me that a bigger boat came to rescue them. But because the fishing boat, her boat, the boat that she was on, was so small and sinking, they couldn't just drag, be dragged. So in the storm, the bigger boat threw over a rope, a literal lifeline. And that each person had to climb this rope in the storm. And she said that these waves were like skyscrapers to her, that if you were to let go of the rope, the sea would swallow you whole. She said that the only way that she was able to get through that rope was not by thinking of the entire length, but by thinking just the next pull, and the next, and the next. And so when I need courage, I think about that. You don't need to have courage for the entire journey, just for the next step and the next. That's beautiful and so well said. Did your parents have high expectations for you as a young woman? I mean, you got to Harvard somehow, and usually that takes a lot to get to an institution like that. You know, I think that this experience of growing up as the daughter of immigrants is one perhaps many other immigrant children share, which is that we live often under, yes, gratitude, but also a patina of sacrifice. You know, this idea that they have gone through so much for us. So we, in some way, perhaps feel a duty, an obligation, in order to make their sacrifices worth it. And so I, and so many of my friends who are children of refugees, have often struggled with that, and what it means to be an achiever within some fixed, preset conditions of what success looks like. Harvard certainly can be that, and so is the trope of being either a doctor or a lawyer. And so you can imagine that when I graduated and decided to become an activist, my parents were not happy about that. But after I was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize, they were fine. We just took that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, you know, when I do speak to college students, I actually do address that, because one thing I really want people to know is that your happiness and your health really is at the foundation of what, well, most parents who love us want us to be. And so even if perhaps your passion looks different than these preset notions, it's okay. And I know that is actually really controversial to say within a community that may have, again, these ideas of what success looks like. But for those who dream of being artists or authors or just something that's different, it's okay to still pursue your passions while also having gratitude for the sacrifices your parents have gone through. And in the end, you know, they'll come around. How long did it take you to learn that? Well, I mean, it took a decade. It took a lifetime, you know? And, you know, after, so I studied national security and astrophysics at Harvard. And after I got my degree, my dad still told me, so when are you going to be a doctor? Wow, wow, even after that degree. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So, and then I was like, oh, now I'm going to be an activist. And again, that was a very different approach to what they saw as security. For them, the mindset is safety and security. And so, yeah, I recently went back to Vietnam to retrace- I saw that. Talk about that. I wanted to do that because I wanted to understand where their pain came from and also truly to understand where I came from, you know? And I wanted to have empathy for a lot of the struggles that they had to go through to inform why they would choose to do certain actions. And I think one of the greatest lessons that I feel gratitude in being able to learn is that it's our parents' first time in life, too. And so what they've been through, we're all human. And to be able to learn where they came from, what they went through, and also be able to see them as humans was so helpful for my own healing journey. Sure. And have you expressed that to them as well? Yes. Through a whole book. Yeah, well, I was going to say, if all the interweaving in that book, it sure seems like it, right? Okay, so you thought you were going to start your career as an astronaut. In fact, you were on your way to NASA, and those plans then got waylaid by your assault in college, which I'm extraordinarily sorry that you went through that. You have used that moment, that horrible, horrible moment, to give back to other survivors. How did you come to know that was the work you wanted to do? I'm going to be really honest here, and I was just so angry. Yeah? Yeah. You know, when I found out that my evidence, colloquially known as a rape kit, which is both life-saving medical attention and then the evidence collection process, when I found out that that could be destroyed, untested, in just six months, even if the statute of limitations for this crime is 15 years in Massachusetts, I felt so betrayed. I remember walking into my local area rape crisis center. Now, I've always identified as a feminist. I care about these issues, but I truly had no idea the Kafkaesque labyrinth that survivors are expected to navigate until I became one myself. I remember there weren't enough seats for us in that waiting room. Oh, my gosh. See, that's one of the greatest moments that shifted my horizon on this issue. Rape is the easiest violent crime to get away with in the United States, and I knew these statistics, and I also knew that it was stigmatic to talk about, which is why the statistics don't perhaps match up with the anecdotal evidence from just the relationships we have in our life, but when I walked into that crisis center, it became so real for me, and I realized I had this choice. I could accept this injustice or rewrite the law, and one of these things is a lot better than the other, so I made a choice to put aside my astronaut dreams and fight, but in the beginning, it really did feel like emulation in the fact that if I didn't fight for this justice, I would just, I couldn't live. I remember the first time that I posted on social media about my story, and the amount of people in my life, my friends who I knew, my classmates, who had their own stories, and they wrote in, and all these women who told me their experiences with either their rape kits being destroyed, or the fact that they had to pay for their evidence collection. You know, my rape kit cost over $4,000. In no other crime does the victim or survivor have to pay for their own evidence collection, right? Why is it that crimes that inordinately impact women, why is it that it's so much harder to get justice? Why is it that they're treated this way? It just didn't match up with what the sacrifices my parents went through in order to get freedom here in America. You know, I had been taught that they went through so much in order to be in a country that gives us equality under the law. And so, yeah, it was anger. But after a while, that anger did dissipate, and it turned into hope. It turned into something different. Okay, but sometimes I've watched people move, something tragic, a trauma happens to them, and they try to rush their anger. Like, I've gotta get over this, especially women. Like, you know, they are definitely, anger, rage. I mean, those are feelings for a reason. And I think sometimes we need to sit in them for them to heal and release, and then decide how you're gonna channel that anger and that rage. How long would you say, or are you still on the journey of healing? How long did it take you to get over the anger part? And are you still healing, or do you feel like you're healed now? I think healing is a lifelong process. For me, it's ever iterative. And justice also, I think, is different for everyone. You know, and so for me, it was making sure that no one would ever have to go through what I had to go through, and that was in the form of fighting for these rights, and making sure that these human rights were in place. My spark happened after I had two times tried to save my rape kit. So because my rape kit, I had to live by date of rape every six months. I'd have to fight for it, and there existed no standard operating procedure in order to save the evidence. I'd have to, first of all, track down where the DNA evidence from my body was taken, and then convince the forensic lab, the different police departments to coordinate and tell me whether or not my evidence still existed or was it destroyed. After two times of that happening, and then hearing from everybody else, I literally wrote to everyone I knew. I BCC'd my professors, my classmates, my former bosses. I said, will you walk with me? Will you help me write the Survivor Bill of Rights? I would say that that anger fueled me until the passage of my first law. But as more laws have passed, and as I have witnessed other survivors on my team finding their own voice, it has transmuted into hope. For me, I think that there are two things on Earth that are like magic. One is science, and the other is our belief in democracy. When a survivor stands behind the desk before a governor is about to sign their rights into existence, democracy is but us agreeing that these are the values by which we live, and they did it, they won. And so that moment, to me, is really magical. You found courage, huge courage, somewhere along the way to fight back, to fight for your rights, to fight for other people's rights. Where did you find that initial piece of courage? Well, if my mom went through all of that, then I can email a senator. That's how I felt. But I actually, on that point, thank you so much for bringing it up. What I wanna tell survivors is that our joy is the most radical act of rebellion. And so to them, I wanna say, I know so many of us want to save the world. We want to do that because we're compelled by our own experiences or the experience of loved ones. And it's okay if you only save one person, and it's okay if that one person is you. I want survivors to know that because so often, we're put into this very unfair position of having to not only survive and exist, but also try so hard to make some sense of our pain that we've been through so unfairly. And so to those who wanna join me in justice, I welcome you with open arms. I will fight with you. And for those who can't, let me just say that I'm fighting for your choice to not be able to. Well said. For those who are interested, I want you to know that the world actually can change when you speak up. For me, I learned this lesson at the United Nations. When I drafted the United Nations General Assembly Resolution for sexual violence survivors, it had never been done before, and also the bar was much higher than in the United States. For us as activists in the US, we can go to senators or to reps. They are, well, bound by democracy to meet with their constituents. At the United Nations, the ambassador is more or less the equivalent of the district director. The true decision makers are heads of state. And so the gulf of what it means to be an activist and then to have an audience with a head of state, that power dynamic is so large. How do you even begin to reach them? It can feel really intimidating, but for those who know that their voice is worthy, that our pain truly, if we choose to, has purpose. And if we choose to share that and be vulnerable, it will resonate. And I've read that you have said you also connect with their humanity. You find something they're interested in. And then, but I do think that's how human beings, how we connect. So often I've sat with moms and dads in places all over the world, maybe in a village out under a tree and some remote part of Tanzania. And when you ask about changing laws or rules, and I asked the men, well, why would you be willing to change that for your wife or for in this situation? They say, because what's happened to her or to my sister or to my aunt or to my daughter is unjust. And I think we need men on this journey. And yet, and as you talk to people in power have had to, you're talking to a lot of men, right? But you've converted them because we do have a shared humanity. Yeah. There's one important aspect that defines whether or not we succeed. And it has been consistent over all of the campaigns that we've run. That's radical empathy. It's the ability to connect with someone and perhaps someone we know may be difficult, but to see the humanity in them when they might not see it in us. But if we're able to do that, then we can move that conversation forward. And perhaps the most difficult conversation I've ever had, the most high stakes conversation I've ever had was with Pope Francis. Say more about that. Pope Francis, of course, had the choice to not meet with me because I was gonna bring up something that is a sore subject, survivors of sexual violence. And I worked with the Vatican in getting them to understand that we needed to get the Holy Father's blessing in order to convince a block of Catholic nations to vote for this United Nations General Assembly resolution. We talked about our mutual love of space. We also talked about his priority for refugees and migrants. And so when I was given that audience with Pope Francis, I started by thanking him on his work, on things that we share common ground on. I talked about what it meant for my family who was raised, well, I was raised half Catholic, half Buddhist, to see someone like him talk about refugee rights, about the mutual love that, again, we both have for space. And then from there, I talked about how it was my goal to make this world a safer place for all. And I'm so grateful that we were able to have that conversation. Of course, so many people said that it would be impossible for me to get that audience with a world leader, one to talk about an issue that is so sore. But I think that both of us came to that conversation with empathy in mind. And in the end, he did give us that blessing and we were able to pass it unanimously in the United Nations. And so to me, I think impossible is really just an opinion. It's incredible to me that you've had unanimous, that unanimous vote come through. It was six years in the making. Yes, activism is a long journey. Okay, let's talk about your journey to space because you thought you would start your career there. And yet that got waylaid by what happened and then your choosing, which is amazing to be an activist. Look at all you've done. And now you finally have gotten to have your dream of going into space. Talk about how that feels inside of you now. And did you learn anything about yourself from leaving, literally leaving the earth's atmosphere and coming back? I want women to hear me when I say this. When I was on that rocket, I had the opposite of imposter syndrome. I felt like, oh wow, this love that I have for aerospace, this love that I have for this, I was actually meant to be here. I read this recently, which is that our self-esteem is made up of the promises we keep ourselves, no matter how big or small. And to me, being able to keep that promise to my survivor self, the person that I was before I was hurt, the person who wanted so badly to touch the stars, I was able to keep that promise. And if I can, and it was as wild as going to space, then I want everyone to know that you can too. And you did some experiments while you were there. Talk about those experiments and why those in particular were important to you. Yeah, I did three. The first one was on plant pathology. And since I was the first Vietnamese, Southeast Asian woman in space, it really was a deliberate effort to include my community. So I went to the Vietnamese National Space Center, and I also talked to other space agencies within Southeast Asia. And I asked them, well, what kind of experiments would you like me to do in order to show that science can be a tool for diplomacy? So that experiment was to analyze these genetically modified seeds that can grow really fast. And it was in collaboration with American scientists and Vietnamese scientists. This year is the 50th anniversary since the Vietnam War. When Neil Armstrong stepped on the moon, bombs ran down on Vietnam. And when my parents looked up at the sky, they saw death. But 50 years later, when the Vietnamese people and community looked up at the sky, they saw the first Vietnamese woman in space. And I just want people to know that it doesn't matter where you're from, your dreams, no matter how wild they may be, can still come true. The other two experiments I did are based on my specific area of expertise and research, which is women's health, bioastronautics. So the first one I did is on menstruation. Yeah, great. I tested different materials. One of them was in collaboration with the Philippine Space Agency on what would be the best wound dressing in microgravity. And the second one is on breast cancer. It's a wearable ultrasound device. The application for this is we want to see how durable the ultrasound technology can be, whether it survives the G-forces, entry and descent. And then on Earth, the application that we're working on is to put it into bras so that it can detect, well, breast cancer earlier. The experiment was meant to and will continue to hopefully save lives in the future. I love that you both did experiments that were, I mean, obviously in collaboration with other science is a collaborative process, right? But drew in other nations, Vietnam, the Philippines, but also was in your area of interest. And yet we don't go run some of the science that we ought to on this. So the fact that you're not only leading the way and saying, okay, this is my dream, but here's how I'm gonna play it out for other women's health. Just before we close, talk about now, where are you finding radical joy in your life? I have a nerdy answer, which is true. Good, I love nerds. I grew up in a household of nerds and I raised three nerds. Your dad is a aerospace engineer. I grew up watching the Apollo missions. Oh, amazing. My dad is an aerospace engineer too. My mom stayed at home, is a homemaker. Yeah, same as mine. Actually, my dad decided to study aerospace in America because he found that it was easier to learn coding languages than to learn English. Space has always been a part of it, but I love exoplanets. So it really is a very meditative process for me to just look at data. And what I do is look at what's called transit data. Okay, this is gonna be a very nerdy question, but do you know how to discover an exoplanet? Don't you have to block out the light? That's right, yes. So you can see the planet? That's right, yes. So one of the methods is called transit. So there's a telescope, well, now it's JWS, the James Webb Space Telescope. But the mission that I worked on a long time ago is called Kepler. And it looks at the photons that are emitted, and then it just charts it as a line graph. And so if the line all of a sudden dips, and then it dips again, it means that there is something that is blocking that star because the telescope's looking at it. And so that dip is, well, the frequency of the dip is the orbital rate of that planet. And then how far it dips is the diameter of the planet. So I just look at the data, and it's very, all I have to do is just log it. And that brings me joy. But also- That's beautiful. No, it's beautiful, because the joy in the data, and just studying something, I mean, you're discovering something new, right? No, say what else you were gonna say about joy in addition to data. Honestly, just a good cup of coffee with my friends. You know, I really do cherish the ability to grow in life with people. You know, and at the rocket launch, I was so grateful to have people from my childhood all the way up through, you know, there were so many survivors who came, and the Asian-American community, and just to be embraced by such a wonderful community. I felt just so grateful. Yeah, I think so often we think of ourselves as, especially in the US, as rugged individualists, but in fact, we need each other. We know we do. So I'm like you, I find that joy in connection. So thank you so much for being here today with me, and also just for everything you're doing on behalf of others, whether it's survivors, whether it's women's health, whether it's young women who want to be a scientist and go into space, just thank you for role modeling that women can be anything. Thank you. Yeah.