Our Staff
Leadership Team

John Anner
President
Based in Oakland, CA

EMW President John Anner has been with the East Meets West Foundation since February 2003. John sees his job as building EMW into a global leader in effective, catalytic solutions to development issues such as the lack of clean water and high infant mortality.

Prior to EMW, John was the founder and executive director of the Independent Press Association, a membership organization that provided technical assistance and business services to hundreds of independent and ethnic periodicals. The IPA was a highly entrepreneurial non-profit that generated most of its budget from earned income. Under John's leadership, the IPA either purchased or launched five businesses in five years. He started the organization with a $5,000 grant in 1996, and grew it to an operating budget of $3.5 million in 2002. He was also the President of BigTop Newsstand Services, an international magazine distribution company acquired by the IPA in 2000. John has also served as Publications Director at the Center for Third World Organizing from 1989 to 1997 where he founded, edited and published Third Force, a cross-cultural national magazine about community and labor politics in communities of color. Prior to that, he was Editor-in-Chief at Nicaraguan Perspectives magazine from 1986-1989.

John was a Peace Corps Volunteer in Mauritania, West Africa during 1983-1985. He also worked in Central America. He received a B.A. with Special Honors in Political Science from Tufts University in 1982, and an M.S. in International Agricultural Development from the University of California at Davis in 1989. John lives in Albany, California with his wife and three daughters. He is a bicycle road racer and member of the Berkeley Bicycle Club.

Read John's Annual Letters on the state of East Meets West.
Read Development Diaries, John's blog on international development

Minh Chau Nguyen
Country Director
Based in Hanoi

Minh Chau Nguyen became the Country Director for East Meets West in March 2009. Her previous positions at EMW include serving on the EMW board and on staff as EMW's Chief Strategy Officer.

Minh Chau spent 25 years working with the World Bank Group in Washington DC. As an economist at the World Bank, Minh Chau was responsible for policy dialogues, project evaluations, and loan negotiations for projects in Asia, Africa and the Middle East. She also served as the head of the Gender and Development Division at the World Bank. In this position, she led the World Bank delegation to the Women's World Conference in Beijing in 1995. Shortly thereafter, Minh Chau joined the International Finance Corporation, a private sector arm of the World Bank, to help direct IFC's operations in riskier markets. Prior to the World Bank, Minh Chau was a lecturer in economics at the University of Washington, Seattle, Washington. She is a co-founder of the ISIS Management Group, which promotes women entrepreneurs' access to venture financing. She has also worked with Small Enterprise Assistance Funds to help increase equity financing for small and medium enterprises in emerging markets.

Minh Chau received her B.S. from Macalester College, an M.S. in economics from the University of Washington, and Advanced Management Training at Harvard Business School.

Read interview held with Minh Chau just prior to her assuming the EMW Country Director position.

Ann Ngoc Tuyet Truong
Chief Financial Officer
Based in Oakland, CA

Ann is a CPA with over 20 years experience of practicing accounting and five years of teaching accounting. Prior to joining East Meets West in June 2008, Ann served as controller for Olivia Cruise, LLC; ABS Laser Printer Pros, Inc; and JustDeals.com, Inc. She taught accounting at San Francisco State University and City College of San Francisco and also co-founded an office supplies company and an internet retail company.

Ann holds an MBA degree in management from Golden Gate University and a Bachelor 's degree  in accounting from San Francisco State University. She says she is extremely passionate about EMW's mission because she was once among the disadvantaged people EMW serves and she, "truly appreciates the EMW dental service, education, and clean water programs because I grew up in an environment where these essentials were lacking." She was born during war time in Tra On, Vinh Long, Vietnam.  At the age of 13, Ann arrived in the United States as a Vietnamese boat refugee and has had a life-long dream of returning and building playgrounds for children in Vietnam.  Her association with and work at EMW brings Ann closer to fulfilling her dream to give back to her homeland.

Nguyen Thi Minh Thu
Program Development Director
Based in Hanoi

Thu joined EMW in April 2006. As the EMW's Program Development Director, Thu's main job is to is to design and implement intervention programs to meet the needs of the disadvantaged people that EMW serves and to strengthen the organization's capacity to deliver these services. During her tenure at EMW, Thu has successfully raised over $5 million from institutions, fundraising campaigns and private individuals. She also leads EMW's comprehensive community development programs and has spearheaded international marketing campaigns in health care and education to raise awareness and significant funds for EMW's programs.

Thu is a committed humanitarian with a passion for connecting disadvantaged people with opportunities, a commitment she says is dervied from her upbringing in an extremely poor family during the Vietnam American War. She feels an integral part of Vietnam's current economic development and wants to make sure that these development opportunities are extended to all the people of Vietnam. Thu has held senior positions at private companies and development organizations for the past 15 years. She has BSc in Civil Engineering, and an MSc in International Technology Transfer Management in Germany.

Mark Conroy
Senior Advisor
Da Nang Representative

Mark Conroy has been with East Meets West since 1994 and has held his current position, as Senior Advisor and Da Nang Office Representative, since March 2009. Prior to that, he was EMW’s Country Director for 15 years. His tenure at EMW was preceded by a wide variety endeavors. Before joining EMW, Mark spent two years in Guatemala with the Peace Corps. He earned a commercial multi-engine instrument pilot rating and worked for TWA Express, a small local air service. He owned and operated a dairy farm, construction company and automobile restoration business. Mark lives in Da Nang with his wife and two sons.

Based in Ho Chi Minh City

Jack Bernard joined the East Meets West staff in August of 2009 as the Development Director for Vietnam. Jack supervises the Ho Chi Minh City office with the primary responsibility for developing resources that support the programs of East Meets West. Before joining the EMW staff, Jack volunteered and assisted EMW in making connections from his home in the Seattle area. Jack's initial interest in Vietnam was sparked during a three week long bicycle tour of the country in 2007. He reports that that experience changed his life and he hopes his work in HCMC will help change the lives of those who are supported by EMW's programs.
 
Jack has a varied work history. Immediately prior to joining EMW, Jack served as the Corporate Relations and Development Director for the Alliance for Education, a non-profit that raises money and develops resources for Seattle Public Schools. Jack's role as a professional in the nonprofit sector follows careers as a Marine Corps fighter pilot, a Pan Am commercial pilot, a lawyer in California and Utah, and a restaurant owner in Sun Valley, Idaho. Jack and his partner, Marilynn, have 6 children (three each) and 10 grandchildren. They have a passion for bicycle touring, and for the past 10 years they have taken all of their vacations on their bicycles. In those 10 years they have ridden in France, England, Italy, Germany, Denmark, Netherlands, Belgium, and Vietnam. They are looking forward to exploring more of Asia now that they are based in Vietnam. Their other interests include cooking, writing (a blog for Jack), reading, tennis, films and art.

Jack was educated at the University of Washington (English) and the University of California, Berkeley (Law).

Ho Thi Y Nhi
Deputy Director
Finance and Administration
Based in Da Nang

Nhi has been working for EMW since 2001. Her impression of the Oliver Stone movie, Heaven and Earth, which chronicles the life of EMW founder, Le Ly Hayslip, and her great respect for the mission and ideals of East Meets West and the “golden hearts” of generous American donors solidified her desire to work for the organization. Together with the Admin and Finance Team, Nhi works closely with EMW Country Director, Chief Financial Officer, and others to manage EMW administration, human resources, and financial operations in Vietnam. Nhi says she enjoys working for EMW because it allows her to contribute to assisting needy Vietnamese populations. She feels that the value of life is reiterated through the bright, smiling faces of healthy children after receiving heart surgeries or the joy of people entering newly built compassion homes or using clean water.

Rachelle Galloway
Communications Manager
Based in Oakland

Rachelle joined EMW as a staff member in 2006 to manage the print, online and media needs of EMW. She had worked with EMW since 2003 as a contract graphic designer. In her role as lead of the Communications team, Rachelle manages and produces all the print and online media for EMW including the EMW website, the donor magazine Reach Vietnam,  EMW's Annual Report and all other print materials that EMW produces. She also manages all EMW's e-marketing efforts and oversees the editorial and graphic standards. Rachelle produced and co-directed EMW's 2009 documentary film highlighting EMW's 20 years of work in Vietnam and collaborates with photographers, writers and other creative professionals who work with EMW in Southeast Asia.

Prior to joining EMW, Rachelle was a graphic designer with a focus on design for mission-driven organizations in the Bay Area, including BayNature and Tikkun magazine and the Independent Press Association. She served as the a publications coordinator at the Independent Press Association in San Francisco and was a staff designer at the Public Relations office of California State University, Sacramento. Rachelle also worked as an Account Manager in Atlanta with an events management company where she was on a team that brought the first live webcast of the World AIDS Conference in Switzerland to the internet in 1998.

Rachelle has a B.A. in International Relations and Political Science from Arkansas State University and a B.A. in Graphic Design from California State University, Sacramento.

Cao Vu Hoang Chau
Public Relations Manager, Vietnam

Chau joined EMW since February 2008 and is now the Public Relations Manager managing a Communications team in Vietnam to run all of EMW’s communications and public relations work in Vietnam. Chau works on EMW’s key marketing and fundraising campaigns in Vietnam such as the Operation Healthy Heart/Trai Tim Cho Em campaign and partnership which has raised over a million dollars to save the lives of children with congenital heart defects.

Prior to joining EMW, Chau worked for T&A Ogilvy for four years, managing communications and brand building for international clients including the Singapore Tourism Board, Standard Chartered Bank and Siam Cement Group, among many others.

Chau graduated from Vietnam National University with a major in International Economics and holds an MBA degree awarded by the Paris Chamber of Commerce and Industry. A Hanoian, Chau loves eating out and enjoys the riches of Hanoi with her husband and their daughter.

PROGRAM MANAGEMENT

BREATH OF LIFE

Luciano Moccia
International Program Coordinator
Based in Hanoi

Luciano joined EMW in January 2008 to direct the Breath of Life Program, which aims to assist Vietnamese hospitals in improving newborn care activities with technology and training. Before joining EMW, Luciano worked for 7 years in Vietnam as Country Director of a few Italian NGOs working in different sectors of development, contributing to poverty alleviation all over the country. Luciano came to Vietnam after studying Political Economy at the University of Trento in Italy, and Science and Technology applied to International Development at the University of Roskilde in Denmark, where he received Master Degrees with honors with research-based thesis on the Vietnamese development process. Luciano received numerous scholarships and awards for his excellent academic performances, among which one prestigious Italian award for research on developing countries. Luciano says he is strongly convinced that it is not necessary to think about changing the world: it is enough to leave it just a bit better than how you found it.

CLEAN WATER & SANITATION PROGRAM

Hoang Thi Hang Tam
Senior Deputy Director
Based in Da Nang

DENTAL PROGRAM

Dr. Charles F. Craft
Program Director
Based in Cambodia

After graduating from the University of Nebraska in 1980 with a doctor of dental surgery degree, Dr. Charles "Fritz" Craft moved to Alaska where he served as a Commissioned Officer in the U.S. Public Health Service for 20 years. He provided care to the Aleut, Eskimo and Indian people living in the remote regions of the Bering Sea Coast, the Artic Circle and down in the Aleutain Islands. He performed over 250 field missions to isolated villages to provide dental services to native Americans who had little access to direct dental care.In 1985, Dr. Craft began volunteering with several overseas organizations and has since provided humanitarian dentistry in the countries of Jamaica, Russia, Mongolia, Nepal, Thailand, Indonesia, East Timor, Samoa, Madagascar and the Philippine Islands. He and EMW Country Director Mark Conroy started the East Meets West Dental Program in central Vietnam in 1995.

Dr. Craft currently lives in Cambodia where he works for the International SOS Medical Company and also serves as the Chief Dentist for the US Embassy in Phnom Penh. Dr. Craft is married to Sokunthea and they have two daughters, Crystal and Jessica.

Tran Thi Minh Huong
National Program Coordinator
Based in Da Nang

Minh Huong started working  for EMW Dental Program in June 2005. Before joining EMW, she worked for different projects working in community development and poverty elimination in central Vietnam. Her ambition is to dedicate her abilities and experience to helping disadvantaged people in her country, especially underserved children in orphanages and in rural poor areas. Minh Huong enjoys spending her free time with her family, including her two children and loves cooking, teaching English for children, listening to music and dancing.

LARGE CONSTRUCTION

Nguyen Huu Nam
Deputy Director
Large Construction, Central Region
Based in Da Nang

Ron Smith
Deputy Director
Large Construction, Northern Region
Based in Hanoi

Ron joined EMW in 2003 as project manager for Thai Nguyen Province, and since 2007 has been the Deputy Director of Northern Region Large Construction, responsible for the development and implementation of all EMW construction projects in Hanoi and north Vietnam. Ron supervises each project from initial design stage, through feasibility study, contractor bidding, and construction, to final hand over, ensuring high quality and timely completion. Projects include hospitals, laboratories, university facilities, and schools.

Prior to joining EMW, Ron worked as a project engineer on the Hai Van Pass Tunnel; as resident engineer with Hyder Consultancy of the UK; and as a regional technical manager to the civil and construction division of English China Clays Group. In 1996 he founded Ron Smith Associates, providing consulting services on highway and construction projects both in the UK and internationally.

A British national, Ron is married and has a stepdaughter. Over the years, his work has taken him all over the world, to locations as diverse as Belarus, Tajikistan, India, Holland, Oman and Brazil. He has lived in Vietnam for the past nine years and currently resides in Da Nang.

KON TUM EDUCATION PROGRAM

Vo Thi Hien
Program Manager
Based in Da Nang

SCHOLARSHIP PROGRAM TO ENHANCE LITERACY & LEARNING (SPELL)

Hoang Ngoc Tung
National Program Coordinator
Based in Da Nang

Tung is the National Coordinator for EMW's Scholarship Program to Enhance Literacy & Learning (SPELL), which helps to lower the dropout rate for thousands of poor students in poor areas of Vietnam. Before joining EMW in 1998, Tung worked at the Village of Hope as a social worker, an orphanage center in Da Nang administered by EMW. Tung received a B.A in Business Administration, but always wanted to work for a humanitarian organization in his career. His work is motivated by a strong desire to help poor communities.

Tung says the environment at EMW allows all staff to promote their best abilities. "EMW always gives good chances to all staff to develop their skills. Also, EMW is like a big family, which every EMW member can share happiness and sadness in work and living as well”.

Tung lives with his wife and four-year old son in Da Nang. In his free time, he enjoys playing with his son, listening to music in cafés, swimming and traveling.

SCHOOL CONSTRUCTION

Hoang Ngoc Anh
National Program Coordinator
Based in Da Nang

SUPPORT NETWORK FOR PEOPLE WITH DISABILITIES
AND OPERATION HEALTHY HEART

Nguyen Manh Hung
National Program Coordinator
Based in Quang Ngai

Hung joined EMW in February of 2007 as the National Coordinator for the Support Network for People with Disabilities. SN-PWD is an initiative that creates channels of medical and educational services for people with disabilities in Vietnam. In 2009 Hung was appointed to serve also as a National Coordinator for the Operation Healthy Heart/Trai Tim Cho Em joint campaign, a partnership between EMW, Vietnam National Television (VTV) and the Military Communication Corporation (Viettel) aiming to deliver support to the Vietnamese children with severe heart problems and to build capacity of the hospitals in cardiac surgery and intervention. Hung says he was attracted to EMW because of the real and positive changes that EMW programs brings to communities in need. He also notes, "I have also been persuaded by the high-level ethics of the work and the team spirit that EMW staff have all expressed to me."

Before joining EMW, Hung had had more than 10 years of experience working as a doctor in medical practice and public health initiatives in local and international NGOs.