Amanda Nguyen is the CEO and founder of Rise, a national nonprofit working to implement legal protections for sexual assault survivors. After Nguyen’s rape kit was on the verge of destruction after only six months of retention, she decided to create a Sexual Assault Survivors’ Bill of Rights. Rise, under Nguyen’s leadership, wrote and unanimously. passed through the U.S. Congress the Sexual Assault Survivors’ Bill of Rights in just seven months. The bill was signed into law in October 2016 by President Obama, and was only the 21st bill in modern U.S. history to pass unanimously on the record. Most recently, Nguyen launched the Rise Justice Labs – a first-of-its-kind social movement accelerator with the mission of helping everyday people pass their first law. The accelerator’s first group of fellows, ZeroUSA, includes Parkland students who are currently working to pass gun control legislation across the country and have already done so in Colorado earlier this year. Previously, she held several roles in the Obama Administration including the Deputy White House Liaison at the U.S. Department of State. She also held roles at NASA headquarters, at Morgan Stanley in public finance investment banking, and at the Harvard-Smithsonian Astrophysics Center as an Origins of Life fellow analyzing the Kepler Exoplanet Mission. Amanda is a 2019 Nobel Peace Prize nominee. She has been named a Forbes 30 Under 30, a Foreign Policy Top 100 Leading Global Thinker, a Young Woman of the Year by Marie Claire, and The Tempest’s #1 Woman of Color Trailblazer. During college, Nguyen created the first student-written course on modern slavery and co-founded Wema Children, an orphanage in Kenya. She is a graduate of Harvard University, 2013.
