Naturalization Ceremony
Tuesday, October 22, 2019
The Honorable Alfred Covello '50, presiding
Keynote Address by Dang Phan '79
Loomis Chaffee will once again host a Naturalization Ceremony for people who will become new American citizens. A special session of the U.S. District Court of Connecticut will convene in the Olcott Center for the occasion. Dang Phan '79 will give the keynote address.
Dang arrived 44 years ago at Loomis Chaffee as a 14-year-old who spoke little English and had just fled Vietnam as a political refugee and a “boat person”. He is currently Managing Director and USA Country Head for CapitaLand, the ninth largest global real estate platform headquartered in Singapore. Dang had served as a Loomis Chaffee trustee from 2002 to 2014 and makes his home in New York City with his teenage son, Revel. He was a trustee of the Allen-Stevenson School in New York City from 2010 to 2016 and currently serves on the Board of Directors for Pacific Links Foundation, a non-profit organization that seeks to empower and enrich the lives of at-risk youths in Vietnam, including combating the trafficking of girls and workers, and funding thousands of scholarships in poor provinces. He has been a member of the Council on Foreign Relations since 2003.
Dang's personal journey is a story of resilience, hard work, and helping hands. He and his family lived in Vietnam until 1975, when they fled in a small cargo boat after the fall of Saigon. Rescued by the U.S. Navy in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, the family eventually made its way to the United States and Windsor, Connecticut.
Loomis Chaffee faculty members learned of the Phan family and spearheaded an effort to bring the Phans to campus to live in a faculty apartment while they rebuilt their lives. When Dang's parents moved to Ohio in order for his father, who was a doctor in Vietnam, to become recertified as a physician in the United States, Dang and his sister Lan Phan Pham '78 remained at Loomis Chaffee as day and eventually boarding students.
Dang immersed himself in his studies and in the life of the school, developing his English, excelling as a student, and learning to play basketball and baseball in the intramural sports program. After graduating from Loomis Chaffee, he attended the University of Pennsylvania, where he earned a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering and computer science, was a Benjamin Franklin Scholar, and graduated with honors. He went on to earn an M.B.A. from Harvard Business School and launched a career in investment banking, private equity, and real estate and technology entrepreneurship. Dang helped build three leading real estate investment businesses at Goldman Sachs, Donaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette, Soros Fund Management, and co-founded his own prior firm Grove International Partners.
Dang served for twelve years on the Loomis Chaffee Board of Trustees. In 2003, he established the Venable Scholarship Fund at Loomis Chaffee in honor of former faculty member Richard Venable and his wife, Judy, who were instrumental in bringing Dang and his family to campus and who eagerly watched Dang thrive in his new community. Dang often has expressed his gratitude for the Venables and other generous faculty members. ‘My family was given a warm and non-intrusive welcome,’ he said when he created the scholarship fund. "The Loomis Chaffee community and its nurturing environment gave us a start that made me feel that anything was possible with respect to our future," Dang said.