Sahra Vang Nguyen

Sahra Vang Nguyen from serving up authentic eats to filming eye-opening documentaries, this polymath is making her message heard.

- Atoosa Moinzadeh

“I’m actually quite introverted,” concedes Sahra Vang Nguyen, seated outside of a bustling coffee shop in Bushwick, Brooklyn. “And I’m still always challenging myself to live a little more loudly.” It’s a seemingly moot objective for the exceedingly accomplished 30-year-old entrepreneur and modern-day Renaissance woman, who has already been widely published on topics like race and identity, directed and produced several documentaries, and launched an award-winning restaurant. But even for a natural-born storyteller, finding one’s voice is a lifetime in the making.

A Boston native and daughter of Vietnamese immigrants, Nguyen “learned quickly that [she was] different,” and remembers her family being among the few Asians in the neighborhood. Her parents—her father hailing from Hanoi and her mother from Nha Trang—were part of a movement of “boat people” who fled the Vietnam War in the late 1970s. Throughout Nguyen’s childhood, the rampant racism and classism she experienced in the public education system took its toll. “I didn’t have pride in my culture and family,” she recalls.