Steven Nguyen
VP of Operations
Current Location: Tampa, FL
Current Status: Undergraduate - Senior
Affiliated School: University of South Florida
Experience
USF VSA
-Senior Advisor (2025–2026)
-External Vice President (2024–2025)
-Treasurer (2023–2024)
Vietnamese Community of Tampa Bay
-Council Member / Volunteer Coordinator (2023–2024)
UVSASE
-FPC Associate (2025)
Biography
Hello! My name is Steven Nguyen from Tampa, Florida. I am currently a senior at USF majoring in Biomedical Sciences and Biomedical Anthropology on the pre-medicine track.
Growing up as a Vietnamese-American in a predominantly white area, USF VSA was one of the first communities that not only welcomed me, but gave me the opportunity to grow as a leader. Through my time with USF VSA, I have honed my passion for community building, especially in the celebration of Vietnamese heritage. Since involving myself with UVSASE, I have been surrounded by such an amazing community and have had experiences that I never would have expected to have.
Personal Statement
To me, leadership is about creating the structure and space for others to succeed. Doing so requires a strong foundation of organization, communication, and a commitment to continuous improvement. These are the qualities I strive to bring to every leadership role I take on.
Although my journey with USF VSA began with a desire to find connection, it quickly grew into something much more meaningful. Through my experiences, I learned that spaces like VSA must not only be maintained, but continuously strengthened to ensure they remain welcoming and inclusive for everyone. Strong organizations rely on clear communication, shared drive, and individuals who are willing to step up in high-intensity environments to keep everything running smoothly.
As Vice President of Operations, I would focus on maintaining and strengthening the operational structure that allows UVSASE to thrive. This includes keeping detailed records, maintaining organized systems, and ensuring clear communication across the executive board and committees. While preserving the systems that already work well, I would also aim to identify opportunities to improve efficiency and modernize processes when needed. As a member of the UVSASE executive board, I recognize the importance of clear communication and strong collaboration. A well-organized and unified executive board creates the foundation that allows event directors, committees, and constituent schools to succeed. I also hope to improve accessibility and communication for individuals who want to learn more about UVSASE and become involved in our community.
Ultimately, my goal is to help build systems that allow leaders across the Southeast to focus on what matters most: creating meaningful experiences and strengthening our community. By prioritizing organization, transparency, and communication, I hope to contribute to a UVSASE where every constituent school feels supported, represented, and heard.
USF VSA
-Senior Advisor (2025–2026)-External Vice President (2024–2025)
-Treasurer (2023–2024)
Vietnamese Community of Tampa Bay
-Council Member / Volunteer Coordinator (2023–2024)UVSASE
-FPC Associate (2025)Growing up as a Vietnamese-American in a predominantly white area, USF VSA was one of the first communities that not only welcomed me, but gave me the opportunity to grow as a leader. Through my time with USF VSA, I have honed my passion for community building, especially in the celebration of Vietnamese heritage. Since involving myself with UVSASE, I have been surrounded by such an amazing community and have had experiences that I never would have expected to have.
Although my journey with USF VSA began with a desire to find connection, it quickly grew into something much more meaningful. Through my experiences, I learned that spaces like VSA must not only be maintained, but continuously strengthened to ensure they remain welcoming and inclusive for everyone. Strong organizations rely on clear communication, shared drive, and individuals who are willing to step up in high-intensity environments to keep everything running smoothly.
As Vice President of Operations, I would focus on maintaining and strengthening the operational structure that allows UVSASE to thrive. This includes keeping detailed records, maintaining organized systems, and ensuring clear communication across the executive board and committees. While preserving the systems that already work well, I would also aim to identify opportunities to improve efficiency and modernize processes when needed. As a member of the UVSASE executive board, I recognize the importance of clear communication and strong collaboration. A well-organized and unified executive board creates the foundation that allows event directors, committees, and constituent schools to succeed. I also hope to improve accessibility and communication for individuals who want to learn more about UVSASE and become involved in our community.
Ultimately, my goal is to help build systems that allow leaders across the Southeast to focus on what matters most: creating meaningful experiences and strengthening our community. By prioritizing organization, transparency, and communication, I hope to contribute to a UVSASE where every constituent school feels supported, represented, and heard.
Application Questions & Responses
My biggest motivation for running for eboard is the impact that UVSASE have had on my own personal and leadership growth. When I first became involved in VSA, I was simply looking for a community where I could reconnect with my cultural identity and find a sense of belonging. Through this, I often found myself carrying a lot of weight on my own shoulders, with other members being unequally to the organization. However, through being involved as FPC Associate, I found a community that I truly feel connected, but also share the same level of passion and drive for uplifting one another and creating opportunities for others to grow. Because of those experiences, I feel motivated to give back to the community that has given me so much. I want to apply the skills I have developed through event planning, organization, and leadership to help support UVSASE on a larger scale. Serving on E-Board would allow me to contribute to the systems and structures that make these events and spaces possible. Ultimately, my motivation comes from wanting to ensure that other students across the Southeast have the same opportunities to find community, develop as leaders, and feel proud of their identity through UVSASE.
Interview Questions & Responses
I would like to say my principal weakness is definitely biting a lot more than I can chew or just taking on a lot more than I can handle per se. And it’s something I’ve kind of just worked through at the moment with just scheduling and and just reaching out. How it’s gonna interfere later on is there are 19 schools within the region, hoping to gain more on and working with scheduling interviews with all the Presidents as well as projects, I would like to get it done in the position. It might determine or it will interfere because I will have a lot more on my plate, working with a lot more individuals and then also working with the events that UVSASE does commit or does put on. How might I overcome them is basically just making sure that I’m scheduling everything accordingly ahead of time. And then as well as being comfortable with asking for help asking other fellow Eboard members to see if they can help take some of the slack or if I’m short during some areas, just so they are transparent on where I’m at and I can more efficient get what I need to do, done in time or in a timely manner as well as just working with the president as well as see if they can work with me and try to get some of the projects done as well. So just overall transparency and being able to reach out.
Okay, so a situation where someone work was criticized, was definitely planning as Hospitality Director, I’m trying to get what I needed to do or done with them, I just wasn’t as clear or as organized as I should have been. And my team, my committee members, approached me about it, talk to me about it. How I handled it, I took it personally, not like, personally, not because of them, but more so on me that I should have done better, I could be doing better, especially in my position. And in that I internalized that feeling and then I did my best to overcome or basically solve any of the problems that I had originally or any problems they had with me and then making sure to ask them afterwards if there’s any way for me to do better oranything they want to see more out of me from, which falls into how I prefer my current feedback or criticism. I definitely don’t mind that all constructive criticism. If I’m doing wrong, I would definitely like to know that I’m doing wrong or if I’d need to improve, I would definitely like to know that I need to improve just so I can fix it. Because it’s one of those things where I feel like, if I don’t know, how will I fix it? Because even even if I’m paying attention to myself, there’s ways that I mean, everyone’s human and I will slip up. But if someone has any issues, I really hope people will just tell me right off the bat, because I’m pretty, I would say, in the moment, not in the moment, I’m a face to face person, I should say. I’m an open book. If you tell me this is a problem, and I will deal with the problem.
So the current pillars would be unity, leadership, culture, and development and advancement. Our strongest pillar would definitely have to be the leadership aspect.The reason why I say leadership is, say Element, or Olympics, or camp really emphasizes growing your leadership skills and then leading a team leading events and turns hoping to have more staff members or more committee members anything growing in that position. And then our weakest, I definitely would say, culture. In our events we do include a lot of cultural aspects. But I don’t see us applying culture as much to our programs, teaching more about the history, teaching more about, I guess, a sense of Vietnamese American but more. And then…yeah, not teaching as much sense of what it means to Vietnamese American or Vietnamese or everything that goes along with that saying like, what a normal everyday Vietnamese person does, their their beliefs, or kind of just their day to day lives or anything like that. How would I improve that pillar is to work on adding more segments or even just topics or discussions, where we can talk about what it means or have a discussion even about identity of what it means to be a Vietnamese American or Asian American to really talk about these things. And it’s something I definitely want to push more just because I myself, have been having an identity crisis trying to figure out like, what it means to be Vietnamese American, and if so, what does Vietnamese American mean to my role in society? What should I be doing? And so discussion questions, bring up topics to talk about even more I guess segments that camp or conference. I don’t know how we do this for Olympics, probably not that maybe toss him more like cultural games during conference as well, instead of just some of the more popular games or popular American sports or so. And then really talking about like the history of immigrants and moving to the US as well, because I feel as that’s a very important as we get further generations and generations further away from first generation Asian Americans or even from our parents, which were immigrants, we tend to lose the, I guess, severity or the impact of how much our past ancestors or like family had to really push to give us the life that we had here. So those are the topics I really want discussed in all of our programs and off to the side as well.
With everything that’s going on, traveling is definitely gonna be restricted, it’s gonna definitely be a little bit harder for us to meet. And this is why the online platform is something that we definitely need to research more and move into. Say any virtual experiences and even going back to what I said before, opening up topics or discussions where anyone in SE can meet and freely talk and discuss about their experiences and even share, say like, have one night where everyone kind of discusses and talks about their families experienced going to the US and really sharing that so that we’re constantly talking about issues that need to be talked about and then building the community. And then even with the, say, games, we can do online game nights to bring the communities together, we can even split, say, like the region into spatial areas like have almost like a tournament even to have one region or a couple schools on one side and keep them in groups and then constantly just switch up groups. So each group is talking with new people every time because sometimes even with larger groups, people are a little bit more scared or shy to talk to you. So we can open up multiple, I guess chat rooms to even have people discussing different topics as well. So moving towards an online platform, is I guess, in my beliefs the best way that we can address the travel issue in the travel ban because at this time, only thing we can do is really just work around with what we have.
With the director, I would personally reach out to them first, have a talk with them, get to know what’s going on…Well, actually, you can do this with both executive board members as well. Because everyone signs on to a role for it’s almost like they agree to the specific terms that they need to get this job done. So if there’s lacking or slacking in the position, there usually is an underlying reason of why they’re not making or making deadlines or not getting their work done. So first would be talking to them kind of get an understanding of why they’re not getting their work done. Is it like personal reasons? Are they not able to? I guess organize well or if they’re having any troubles, then seeing what ways can I help in what ways can another committee help? If we can take some of the load off, either the director or the executive board to see what helps gets results with them. And then if they’re constantly not doing their job well, are they constantly falling back, then it’s something that for a director, I would talk to other fellow executive members, seeing if they can reach out, see if they can make an impact, get through to them. If not working with the Exec Board, you’d have to come to a decision to see what the next plan of action would be if we personally cannot get them to work. And then it just comes down to a team decision. And then for an executive board member, it would be a similar process, we would talk to them, get down to them personally see what’s going on, and then see if there’s any way to alleviate some of that workload or help out or any personal matter that we can help out with and then if not, it’s something that we have to talk as a group together and see what needs to be done next.
Now, if two members on executive board were having some problems with each other, and it was leaking into the work environment, what I would do is sit down with each of them individually and listen to their side, to kind of get a better understanding of where each of them are coming from. And then seeing where their anger lies or any discretion or any aggression, and then see if I can talk to them if they can work out a solution or like a middle ground. And then from there, I will take those answers and then I’ll keep those to my heart when I have both of them sit down and then give each of them time to talk without the uninterrupted time to talk. So then the other person can kind of listen. And then I’ve worked as a mediator, try to find some middle ground where they can get a mutual understanding, to resolve the issue or at least, quell the issue. And then also to reiterate that I understand there is some personal problems, but there also is a deadline. And this is a professional position, and we need to keep professional and personal, separated. And then if for at least if the issue is not able to be resolved at the moment, because I don’t know what’s going on if their anger is just unquenchable at the moment, I would say hold that anger off to the side for this justice week until deadline is done so we can get work done and then give them specific tasks and goals to get done within that week. So then I can kind of check up on them and make sure they’re getting their tasks done. And then afterwards, if we can’t quell in the beginning, then we’ll see if we can after we get the work done, we have a little bit more time to kind of just work on the relationship between the two.
Now, if a member approaches me, claiming that they were sexually harassed, this is something I definitely want to talk to them about first to see if they’re comfortable talking about because that’s not something, it’s…sometimes it scars them…if they’re okay with talking about I would like to understand a little bit more of what’s going on. And then the other party that was involved. And then I would like to see if there was anyone else nearby or around that could also back up these statements and then talk to the other person as well to see their side because this situation is a very heavy topic to blame right off the bat and to charge right off the bat because there’s always some missing there’s always a potential for misinformation and I don’t want to ruin anyone’s lives for, by not clearly check into the situation. So I will talk to the person claiming or saying stating that they were sexually harassed, the person who they claimed, sexually harassed them, and then check to see the situation if there was any way I could find evidence or proof or anything. If there’s any videos or anyone around that can I can listen to and then I would definitely like if it is comfortable with that member, if I can talk to the rest of Eboard about it to make a decision, because I feel like that decision is such a heavy decision that I cannot make a call on my own. So I feel more comfortable talking with the rest of Eboard to make sure like, what our next plan of action do we report the case or should we check more into if there’s any inconsistencies in like one or the other stories to see if we can find any common ground or not a common ground, anything that leads to facts.