Bao Nguyen Appointed to GGUSD Board

Trustees of the Garden Grove Unified School District approved the provisional appointment last week of Bao Nguyen to fill the vacancy on the district's board of education.

Nguyen will be sworn in at the regular board meeting on July 19. He will take the open seat created by the resignation of KimOanh Nguyen-Lam, who stepped down June 1 after accepting a position in Washington, D.C., with the U.S. Department of Education. Nguyen finished third among a five-candidate field in the November 2010 election behind Board President Lan Quoc Nguyen and trustee Bob Harden.

Nguyen has been a district resident for 23 years and is a product of GGUSD schools having attended Allen Elementary School in Fountain Valley, Ralston Intermediate School, Garden Grove High School and Pacifica High School, from which he graduated in 1998. He received his bachelor’s degree in political science from UC Irvine, his master’s degree in religious studies from Naropa University in Colorado, and holds California state certification in mediation. He is trilingual in English, Spanish, and Vietnamese.

Nguyen works as a community organizer, and has taught as a substitute teacher in the district. He also served on the steering committee for the California Endowment’s building healthy communities initiative in Santa Ana, working collaboratively on strategic planning with more than 50 community organizations and public agencies.