Amanda Nguyen

Some Lesser Known Facts About Amanda Nguyen

• Her parents immigrated from Vietnam to America after the fall of Saigon and its capture by North Vietnam.

• She worked as a field researcher at Harvard Law School Project on Women’s Rights and Disability from
  May 2010 to August 2010.

• She served as a policy intern at NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration) from May 2011 to August 2011.

• She was an intern in the office of the chief of staff and the office of public engagement at the White House from September 2011 to January 2012.

• She worked as a summer analyst in Public Finance Investment Banking at Morgan Stanley, an American multinational investment bank, from June 2012 to Aug 2012.

• She worked as a Harvard-Smithsonian Astrophysics Fellow from January 2013 to May 2013 and researched with Professor Dimitar Sasselov using NASA’s Kepler data to identify planetary candidates.

• She worked at the office of the chief technologist at NASA from May 2013 to August 2013.

• In 2013, she was raped while attending college in Massachusetts. She didn’t want to press charges immediately after her rape as she felt that the court process might take too long and interfere with her career.

• Initially, she wanted to become an astronaut, but, after finding out that her rape kit could be destroyed after six months, even if it was untested, she chose to become a civil rights activist.

• In November 2014, she founded Rise, a non-governmental civil rights organisation comprising various victims of sexual assault, in Washington, D.C.

• She has worked as the Deputy White House Liaison in the U.S. Department of State from October 2015 to September 2016.

• She helped craft and pass the 2016 Sexual Assault Survivors’ Rights Act that addresses the handling of sexual assault evidence-collection kits on the federal level.

  

• In 2018, American contemporary artist Shepard Fairey created her portrait for Amplifier’s ‘We the Future’ campaign as part of a series of art pieces that would be used by 20,000 middle and high schools in America to teach various grassroots movements.

  

• In 2019, she was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize for her work as a civil rights activist and for her role in the passage of the Sexual Assault Survivors’ Bill of Rights.

• On 5 February 2021, her social media post on poor media coverage regarding racist violence against Asian people in America went viral.

• In August 2021, she started working as a bioastronautics researcher at the International Institute for Astronautical Sciences (IIAS).

• She published her memoir on 4 March 2025, titled ‘Saving Five: A Memoir of Hope.’
  

• On 14 April 2025, she travelled to space as part of the Blue Origin NS-31 sub-orbital spaceflight mission under the New Shepard program of Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin Enterprises, L.P. and became the first woman of Vietnamese heritage to travel to space.

  

• During her space flight, she performed an experiment that involved testing materials for wound dressing in microgravity. She claimed that the experiment would help women to travel to space in an interview, and said,
  

  Historically, NASA barred women from becoming astronauts, and one of the reasons they cited the most was menstruation. That’s why I’m doing it.”

• She carried 169 lotus seeds with her to space that were provided by the Vietnam National Space Center to study the effects of space conditions on plant growth. She also took materials to test for next-gen spacesuits and a wearable ultrasound patch to space.

• During an interview, she revealed that she carried a note with her that read, ‘Never, never, never give up.’ She had written that note after she was raped.