My story
Not a résumé. A short walk through the moments — and the questions they left me with — that shaped what I choose to build, and why I keep showing up for the people the world tends to overlook.
My father grew up with very little in our home province. I did not live that childhood, and I am careful never to borrow his hardship as my own story. What I did inherit is a clear-eyed sense that I now enjoy opportunities his generation never had.
His stories taught me something specific: a Tết gift, a small scholarship, or one adult willing to pay attention can change how a child sees their own future. That is where my sense of responsibility begins.
I was given things my father's generation was not: teachers who took my questions seriously, and a school that let me build, not just memorize. I try not to treat any of it as ordinary.
The more I received, the more it felt like a debt of attention — something to pass forward rather than keep. That belief quietly shaped everything I chose to do next.
Mathematics taught me to be precise and honest — you cannot argue a proof into being true. For years I loved solving problems other people had set for me.
At some point that stopped being enough. I wanted to use what I knew to find problems worth solving in the real world — and to build something a real person could use. That shift is why I started building software.
AvaB began with a question: how can technology make learning more personal for many students at once? It taught me to build at scale.
But scale led me to a harder question: who is still left out of the systems we build? That question took me to the Nguyễn Đình Chiểu School for the Blind, and to EduVision-AI — where I learned that a solution is not truly intelligent if it excludes the people who need it most.
For six years I have helped run community programs — a zero-đồng Tết market, Mid-Autumn for children, Tết with elderly neighbors, and an education fund. My role grew from taking part to organizing and leading.
What I learned is not measured in gifts handed out. It is that leadership is a promise counted in years — the same programs, run a little better each time, so they do not depend on any one person.
I want to keep building AI that serves the people the world tends to overlook — accessible, honest, and human-centered — and to make the community work durable enough that its good outlives me.
At university I hope to go deeper into accessible learning technology and to keep asking a question I have not fully answered: who is still being left behind, and what would it take to include them?
