BIOGRAPHY

PROFESSOR WENDY NICOLE (NHU-NGUYEN)  DUONG 

Wendy Nicole NN Duong is a journalist, novelist, lawyer, professor/scholar and L'Art Brut artist.

     She holds a B.S. with High Honors in journalism/communication from Southern Illinois University, a J.D. cum laude from the University of Houston, and an LLM from Harvard (with a straight A transcript and a published thesis on Vietnamese women and gender relations).  But her commitment to academic excellence did not just begin in the U.S.   Prior to 1975, for several consecutive years, she was selected as South Vietnam’s top high school student, nationally. Just a month before the fall of Saigon in 1975, at the age of 16, she was awarded South Vietnam’s national honor prize in literature on Vietnamese Women’s day (The Trung Sisters’ Day).

      Ms. Duong is not new to Houston.  In 1980, at the age of 24, she was Risk Management Executive Director for the Houston ISD while attending law school at night. During law school, she also nursed her ailing mother back to health while her three siblings were still in elementary school, high school, and college. In 1991, after a successful career in Washington, D.C., including her position as special trial attorney for the Securities & Exchange Commission, she returned to Houston and was appointed Associate Municipal Judge for the City.  As recognized by the American Bar Association, the appointment made her the first Vietnamese American to join the  U.S.  judiciary.  Many Vietnamese Houstonians also know her as a singer and a novelist.  In 1994, Houston’s only Vietnamese “singing judge who writes” resigned from the bench to join Baker & McKenzie as an international lawyer and, later, became senior legal advisor to Mobil Asia-Pacific.

     After serving as a full-time law professor at the University of Denver for 10 years, she was selected U.S. scholar in the Fulbright Core Program for academic year 2011-12.  In 2013, Fulbright selected her as law-and-economics specialist to teach in Russia.   According to Fulbright, “[its] alumni have become heads of state, judges, ambassadors, cabinet members, CEOs, university presidents, journalists, artists, professors and teachers.”  (In Ms. Duong’s case, she became a judge and professor before her Fulbright appointments.)   

      In 2011, Amazon Publishing released three of her novels, a trilogy that depicts the Vietnamese American resettlement experience in the form of fiction. In 2012, two of these three novels received recognition as multiculturalism best fiction and finalist in the International Book Award competition.
      Her scholarly publications in academia have concentrated on foreign direct investment, international business transactions, and patterns of global economic development. Much of her non-fiction writing has also been influenced by her upbringing in Vietnam, including her most recent article published by the Seattle Journal of Social Justice. There, she presented eight legal proposals to eradicate human trafficking and child prostitution.