{"id":22357,"date":"2021-05-19T15:27:04","date_gmt":"2021-05-19T19:27:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/metcalfinstitute.org\/?p=22357"},"modified":"2025-09-02T12:54:41","modified_gmt":"2025-09-02T16:54:41","slug":"profile-ngoc-nguyen","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/metcalf\/profile-ngoc-nguyen\/","title":{"rendered":"Ngoc Nguyen"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"HeadshotNgoc Nguyen seeks to highlight the stories and voices of immigrant communities through journalism. \u201cAmerica is a multicultural landscape made of so many diverse backgrounds,\u201d says Nguyen, a Metcalf Institute alumna and Advisory Board member. \u201cWe still have a long way to go in newsrooms to reflect this in terms of both people and values.\u201d She is currently the partnerships and ethnic media editor for KFF Health News, a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues. <\/strong><\/em>Nguyen, who was born in Vietnam and came to the U.S. when she was one, is particularly drawn to covering Asian American issues and environmental health. \u201cI strive to tell stories about public and environmental health through the perspective of immigrant communities.\u201d<\/p>\n

Covering devastation in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina represented an important early career step for Nguyen as she reported on the challenges minority communities faced in rebuilding. \u201cEven a year after the storm, residents who had been displaced were still struggling to return to their homes and towns,\u201d she explains. In addition, there was also a push to create a dumping site for large amounts of storm debris in neighborhoods with African-American and Vietnamese families, which residents strongly opposed. \u201cThat was the first time I had seen that kind of activism among Asian immigrants, and it was very inspiring,\u201d she states. \u201cOftentimes these communities of color are fence-line communities, living right next to industrial waste or pollution sites.\u201d<\/p>\n

Nguyen also had the opportunity to travel to Korea, Hong Kong, and Vietnam to report on the environment and public health. She describes this experience as a defining moment for her both personally and professionally, recognizing that she \u201cwas better able to connect with [her] own cultural background.\u201d Bicycling through villages in Vietnam, she also learned about the long-term consequences of the Vietnam War and its impacts on these people, such as unexploded mines still buried in the ground. When she returned to the U.S., she \u201cbecame interested in the legacy of Agent Orange exposure on Vietnamese Americans and veterans from this war.\u201d Nguyen worked for a year on an investigative report studying this topic and earned a national journalism award from the Asian American Journalists Association for it. \u201cThis hands-on reporting abroad heightened my interest in ethnic media and put me on course to continue striving to be a bridge between ethnic media and mainstream media.\u201d<\/p>\n

In 2007, Nguyen\u2019s journey brought her to Metcalf Institute\u2019s Environmental Reporting Fellowship program. \u201cThis fellowship was very important in giving me the foothold, skills, and networks to grow as an environmental reporter,\u201d she says. \u201cThe Fellowship expanded my knowledge of important scientific disciplines such as marine science and science communication.\u201d It also enabled her to gain hands-on experience as an environment reporting fellow at a prominent regional newspaper, the Sacramento Bee, where she worked with editor Ricardo Sandoval-Palos, who now serves on the Metcalf Institute Advisory Board with her. She also attended and served as a mentor for Metcalf\u2019s 2011 Marine Science Seminar for Journalists.<\/p>\n

Nguyen joined Metcalf Institute\u2019s Advisory Board in 2020. \u201cI\u2019m a huge fan of Metcalf\u2019s trainings and programs for scientists and journalists, in addition to the great work they do to foster diversity and inclusion in STEM fields,\u201d Nguyen explains. \u201cThis aligns with my ongoing work with ethnic media and health and environment reporting.\u201d<\/p>\n

Nguyen looks forward to working with Metcalf to advance diversity and inclusion in the news media and facilitate informed conversations about science and the environment.  \u201cThere\u2019s never been a more relevant time to tackle these issues,\u201d she states. \u201cI\u2019m excited to get Metcalf\u2019s work and its valuable resources for journalists onto the radar of ethnic media and journalists of color\u201d, says Nguyen, who serves on the Advisory Board\u2019s promotions committee. \u201cLooking forward, that would be where I\u2019d like to focus.\u201d<\/p>\n

Written by Gabriella Placido. She\u2019s in her final year of a URI College of the Environment and Life Sciences (CELS) Communications Fellowship. The Fellowship was established in 2014 to help graduate students gain hands-on science communication experience by interviewing, gathering content for stories, and writing for the CELS website, social media, and newsletter.<\/em><\/p>\nread more alumni profiles<\/a>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ngoc Nguyen seeks to highlight the stories and voices of immigrant communities through journalism. \u201cAmerica is a multicultural landscape made of so many diverse backgrounds,\u201d says Nguyen, a Metcalf Institute alumna and Advisory Board member.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2201,"featured_media":17430,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[51,16,10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-22357","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-alum-hp","category-alumni-reporting","category-alumni-spotlight"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/metcalf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22357","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/metcalf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/metcalf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/metcalf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2201"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/metcalf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22357"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/metcalf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22357\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26741,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/metcalf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22357\/revisions\/26741"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/metcalf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17430"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/metcalf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22357"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/metcalf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22357"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/metcalf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22357"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}