Mây Nguyễn

Mây (pronunciation) Nguyễn brings over 15 years of experience as a community organizer, attorney, and program director to her role as Senior Philanthropic Advisor at East Bay Community Foundation. She has been a leader in disaster and climate justice, co-authoring a white paper on the BP Oil Spill for the White House Initiative on AAPI, providing written testimony on the Oil Pollution Act for a US Senate Energy Subcommittee hearing, and appearing on NBC, NPR, and local Louisiana media. She published a revised second edition environmental law and policy advocacy guide and has taught an undergraduate program and trained over a thousand impacted people and local elected leaders to take action. And she received UCLA School of Public Policy’s Rishwain Social Justice Entrepreneurship Award for her transformative organizing work with Black, Indigenous, and Immigrant fishing communities to win recognition and damages for traditional fishing practices.

The proud daughter of refugees from Viet Nam, Mây grew up in New Orleans and east Oakland as one of seven children. She earned her BA from Amherst College and MA from Johns Hopkins University. And received a NAPABA Scholarship to attend UCLA School of Law, where she earned her JD with a certificate in Public Interest Law and Policy.

Mây lives in the Bay Area, California with her husband and two young children, and enjoys traveling, ice skating, and making music. She currently serves on the Board of Directors of a community foundation in Louisiana, and Lowlander Center, a climate justice participatory action group.

She looks forward to meeting more funders and donors and co-creating philanthropic strategies to realize a just east bay for all of us that call this area home. Her specific areas of interest include Trust-Based philanthropy, Regenerative philanthropy, faith-based giving, crowdfunding, and centering Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPoC) philanthropy. She is fluent in Vietnamese and proficient in Spanish.