Vietnamese-American Leadership Summit 2011: A Strategy for Creating a Prosperous Community

1. Vietnamese-American Leadership Summit 2011: A Strategy for Creating a Prosperous Community Corporate Leadership, Entrepreneurship, and Economic Development Committee (CLEED) Draft 2.0 Last Modified: June 19, 2011 Last Reviewed: Tino Dinh

2. Contents • Context: Vietnamese-American Leadership Summit Goals • Track 2 Objectives: Building a Prosperous Community • Challenges and Current State • Track 2 Strategy • Focus on Structure • Action Plan

3. Context: Vietnamese-American Leadership Summit Goals

4. Track 2 Objective: What Do We Want? • VA Summit Mission: To Build a Prosperous and Influential Community • CLEED Mission: Create an action plan that describes how to build a prosperous Viet-Am Community • Action plan = strategy that is in the self-interest of Vietnamese-American business people to execute • Summit brings people and ideas together to create the action plan and identify the resources and people to execute it

5. What Do We Want?: Defining Prosperity • Creating SMART (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, Timely) Objectives • What Does a ‘Prosperous Community’ Mean • Overall Wealth of Community? • Total $$ Wealth • Individual and Family Wealth? • $$ Wealth/Household • % Poverty • Educational Attainment • Closing the ‘gap’? • Gini coefficient (wealth disparity) • Systemic characteristics of ‘successful firms’ • Scalable • Sustainable • Capitalizes on unique competitive advantages of Viet-Amer Community • Firms? • First to enter Fortune 500 • First 10 to break $100MM revenue • First globally-recognized brand? • First franchise to open internationally? • Publicly traded • ‘Best place to work for’

6. Current Challenges: A Hypothesis • Most Vietnamese-American businesses are ‘mom and pop’ stores that: • Struggle financially • Cannot be expanded beyond family or passed to the next generation • Concentrated in low-skill industries that are vulnerable to price competition, outsourcing, or economic downturn • Though certain Vietnamese-American firms and individuals may be very successful, they are outliers • They are examples of individual success, rather than any institutional capacity • There is no ‘system’ in place that recognizes the unique challenges faced (or advantages enjoyed) by Vietnamese-American entrepreneurs and facilitates their success • Beyond immediate family or personal relationships, there is little trust amongst Vietnamese-American firms and hence a lack of cooperation or collective action to achieve common interests • Vietnamese-Americans executives are under-represented in Fortune 1000 firms • No good, comprehensive data on the state of Vietnamese-American businesses as a whole • There is little transparency amongst Vietnamese-American businesses as a whole, who are mostly ‘cash and carry’ due to mistrust of government tax authorities, and others in the community (‘survival mentality’) • Vietnamese-Americans may be an attractive market for other businesses/products/services---but it is hard to verify this without data

7. Current State: SWOT Analysis of Vietnamese-American Business Community Today

8. Track 2 Strategy for a Prosperous Vietnamese-American Community Build Structure: Strengthen Chambers of Commerce, Networks, Associations Build Capacity: Human, Intellectual Resources Increase Access to Capital: Making Our Community a Destination for Investors

9. Track 2 Strategy for a Prosperous Vietnamese-American Community

10. Vietnamese-American Business Community: Current and Future Current State: Uncoordinated Individuals and Groups, Loose Networks Future State: Formal Governance Structure and Coordinated Networks Technology, Governance Structure, Expertise Mandate, Taskings, and Resources

11. Proposed Governance Structure • Nationally Representative Board of Directors • Regional, state, or city representation? • ‘New Committee’ • Professional Staff at National VietAmCham; • National Network of Experts • Delegation volunteers/liaisons to Local Chambers • Liaisons to specific industries and Viet professional associations • Liaisons to strategic alliances (non-Viet) • Insert MAP here

12. Structure Action Plan: Year One • Local Chamber delegates will lead outreach to their local communities: • Build consensus and buy-in for Action Plan’s central objectives and new VietAmCham Governance Structure • Receive and incorporate feedback from local business owners, executives • Identify significant regional challenges or opportunities that can be successfully addressed at the National level • Share findings with New Committee • Develop membership campaign to be implemented locally • New Committee will inventory and reach out to existing Vietnamese-American business associations, professional groups • Issue report on state of VietAm business organizations • Coordinate national membership drive • Identify funding for permanent staff • Coordinate joint membership fee for national/local chambers of commerce • Build Alliances: New Committee will Identify/reach out to like-minded regional and national organizations (SCORE, Skoll Foundation, Kauffman Foundation, US Chamber of Commerce, TIE, etc) • Work with Track 3 to “adopt” a local chamber • New Committee will create technology platform or portal to serve as central repository of info and networking, refineStrategy and Action Plan • Establish national database of VietAm business leaders • Break out to-do list by type, delegations (local outreach) vs. staff (natl coordination) • Identify staff

13. Timeline for Structure Action Plan CLEED Forms; self-organizes VA Leadership Summit: 7/2/2011 Build Structure and Platform First Draft of CLEED Strategy Alliances/ Outreach Local Engagement