Executive Committee Members

Lee Collins, President

Ngô Trung Việt, Vice-President

Board Of Directors

John Balaban, Cary, NC

Lee Collins, President, Palo Alto, CA

Stephen O. Lesser, Treasurer, Los Angeles, CA

Ngô Trung Việt, Vice-President, Há Nội, Việt Nam

Prof. John Phan, Columbia University, New York, NY

Dr. Neil Schmid

Lê Văn Cường

Lương Thị Hạnh

Advisory Council

Dezso Benedek, Athens, GA

Brad Crittenden, Puerto Rico

Đỗ Anh Minh, Singapore

Donald L. Holley, Paris, France

Hồ Văn Tiến, Genève, Switzerland

Lê Mai Phương, Alabama, USA

Lê Phạm Lê, Pittsburg, CA

Dr. Lê Phạm Ngưng Hương, Genève, Switzerland

Prof. Lê Xuân Khoa, Bethesda, MD

Prof. Dr Sci Nguyễn Quang Hồng, Hà Nội, Việt Nam

Steve Nichols, Palm Springs, CA

June Pulcini, Hermosa Beach, CA

Prof. William Seraile, New York City, NY

Virginia Jing-yi Shih, Berkeley, CA

Trần Thắng, West Hartford, CT

Prof. Trần Văn Dĩnh, Washington, DC

Gillam Hall, Pittsboro, NC

Phạm Kiều Diễm, Queens, NY

Gabriella Karsch, Hollywood, CA

We are thankful for their exceptional service:

Phạm Kiều Diễm, Vice President (2007-2009)

Ngô Thanh Nhàn, Vice President (1999-2007)

Đỗ Tuyết Khanh, Vice President (2000-2004)

Mark Barnett, Vice President (2009-2013)

James Đỗ Bá Phước, Vice President and Board (1999-2013)

Wynn Wilcox, Board (2008-2011)

C. Michele Thompson (2006-2011)

In Memoriam

	Stephen O. Lesser (1939 - 2021). Stephen O. Lesser, longtime Treasurer, Secretary, and Board Member of the Vietnamese Nôm Preservation Foundation, passed away on June 15, 2021. Born in Los Angeles, on October 1, 1939, Stephen was a graduate of UCLA, Stanford, and Johns Hopkins universities and later served as a U.S. Foreign Service Officer in Japan. He also served on the boards of several non-for-profit organizations, including the USC Pacific Asia Museum, the Johns Hopkins-Nanjing Council, and the Wende Museum. In all his endeavors, including his work with the Nôm Foundation, he brought to fruition his lifelong interest in the cultural history of East Asia, often quietly providing funding to advance the individual work of students and scholars.
	James Đỗ Bá Phước (1952 - 2015). James Đỗ Bá Phước, one of the founders of the Foundation and its former vice-president. For decades James was at the forefront of opening access to Vietnamese writing systems, ancient and modern, through participation in the Unicode standardization process. A mathematician by training, he was a software engineer and manager in practice, with expertise in the fields of electronic design automation and web technologies. He was also a co-founder of the Pacific Links Foundation, and was active in information technology training in Vietnam. For the past several years he worked in commercial computer engineering, dividing his time between Vietnam and his home in California. His expertise and long-term interest in the technical issues involved in electronic scripts brought worldwide attention to Vietnam's cultural heritage as well as enhancing its technical skills in worldwide business and commerce.
	Father Anthony Tran Van Kiem (L.m. An-tôn Trần văn Kiệm), 1920-2012. Those who value the cultural heritage of Vietnam written in the medieval Hán-Nôm scripts will be forever grateful to Father Anthony for his Giúp Đọc Nôm và Hán-Việt, his ground-breaking life-work which was one of the first dictionaries of the Hán-Nôm writing systems printed in True Type fonts and accessible via the internet. Father Kiem was born on Dec. 31, 1920 in Phát Diệm, Vietnam, and was ordained a priest on June 29, 1946 for the Diocese of Phát Diệm. In 1975 he was accepted into the Diocese of Pensacola-Tallahassee, Florida. He retired to Seadrift, Texas, in 1991 but continued to serve the Vietnamese fishing village there until 2006 when he moved to Atlanta. It was an honor for our Foundation to work with Father Anthony, digitizing his dictionary, publishing it in print in True Type Fonts in 2004, and subsequently making it available at this website.