Finding opportunity in a new land
Tinh duc Phan helps Asian-Americans build their businesses

by Lisa Prezioso Linnell
for Virginia Business
May 2007

Tinh duc Phan has all the trappings of American success. He owns a home and four businesses and has sent his children to college. Plus, he’s chairman of the Virginia Asian Chamber of Commerce. Yet at one point, Phan lived in a tent camp with little more than the clothes on his back.

His life fell apart after the fall of Saigon in April 1975. That’s when Phan and his family fled South Vietnam. “The U.S. government evacuated me and my family. They took us to Clark Air Force Base in the Philippines, and after that they flew us to Guam for a couple of weeks,” recalls Phan who had been deputy chief of the facilities engineering section for the U.S. Embassy in South Vietnam.

The next month, Phan and his wife, four children and four additional children (who were members of his extended family) left Guam and became refugees living in a tent city at Camp Pendleton in California where they stayed for 3½ months.

The collapse of the life he had known in his homeland left Phan in a state of shock. “All of a sudden, within hours you lose everything — your house, your cars, your money. And now you live in a tent,” he says. “I was almost in a nervous breakdown.”

One morning he was lying on a cot with a military blanket pulled over his head when he heard the voices of his children. “They were trying to learn English. You know, saying ‘good morning’ and ‘good afternoon.’ I thought ‘Here you are in bed, crying out about the past, and the past is no longer there. You are crying and whining, and the children are your responsibility. You’re chicken.’”

He got up and embraced them, telling the children, “Let’s get the new day started.” Phan says that was his “momat,” Vietnamese for epiphany or eye-opening experience. And since that moment more than 30 years ago, he has viewed each day as an opportunity.

The United States Catholic Confer­ence eventually sponsored Phan’s 10-member family and moved them to Henrico County to live with Dick and Lois Morley. Phan went to work for the state as a cost estimator for public housing. Because of his education, skill and previous experience, he quickly moved up the ranks until he became a state modernization program manager responsible for renovating public housing for the Richmond Redevelopment and Housing Authority.

He sometimes worked two jobs and saved enough money to buy a house in Henrico. Phan became a U.S. citizen in 1985 and financed college educations for his four children (many of whom received scholarships).

In 1984, he started his first business, Ashland-based PN Construction. (The P and the N stand for the first and last letters of his last name.) The company later became PNC Corp., a contracting company. From there, Phan built three more companies, also based in Ashland: PNC International, an exporter/importer of food and art products; PNC Industries, a manufacturer of aluminum doors and windows for commercial buildings; and PNC Group, a property management and investments company.

By 2003, he was donating his time and expertise to a number of nonprofit organizations and government agencies, including the Virginia Department of Business Assistance and the Virginia Department of Minority Business Enterprise. But as he got more involved in civic life, Phan observed a void in Virginia’s growing Asian community. The number of Asian businesses in Virginia rose 36 percent from 1997 to 2002, reaching a total of 30,460, according to the Census Bureau. Yet, Phan noticed that Asian businesses had little participation in matters involving the larger business community. “I thought it was not adequate not to have good representation,” he explains.
“Asian business people are normally very laid back and if you are not patient enough, you are not going to get their participation,” says Phan. “I am patient.”

His patience paid off, resulting in the founding of the Ashland-based Asian American Business Assistance Center (AABAC) to serve the needs of Asian business owners. He became its chief executive officer. Phan is quick to credit the hard work of like-minded Asian business owners who helped him start the organization. “We spent a lot of time to make sure we have good participation in state, local and federal opportunities.”

AABAC provides information on legal issues, financial matters, government tracts and other business issues. It eventually spun off a second organization, the Virginia Asian Chamber of Commerce. Phan, the chamber’s CEO and chairman, says it now has nearly 400 members throughout the state. Last year the chamber offered free workshops, seminars and conferences to about 500 participants.

Last fall Christine Do, president of Soft Tech Consulting in Fairfax, attended a chamber conference in Richmond, which offered participants an opportunity to meet with major companies and government agencies interested in diversifying their suppliers. Do hasn’t landed a contract yet but says “just to be able to get on their radar screen is going to help.”

She was so impressed by the chamber’s mission that she joined the group and now has become a deputy director for Northern Virginia.

Simon Zhu, owner of Eastern Systems Research Inc. in Virginia Beach, says the event gave him the chance to tout a single-use surgical tray distributed by one of his divisions. “Minorities can be at a social disadvantage,” says Zhu. “They don’t have a chance to meet all the potential buyers, the big guys from big corporations. The chamber set up the conference to let small businesses meet them.”

One of the people that these small-business owners came to meet was Lowell Carrington, manager of supplier diversity for Dominion Resources Inc., the parent company of Dominion Virginia Power. Carrington now serves on the chamber’s advisory board. “You have to be excited to work with Tinh,” he says. “He is a ball of fire.”

James Wilson, a partner in the Richmond law firm of Wilson Stoyanoff PLC, volunteers his time as the chamber’s general counsel in a similar fashion. He became interested in the organization after attending one of its conferences. “[Phan] really wants to show people that success is available to anyone in this country who wants to make the effort,” says Wilson. Along with attorney Elizabeth Kershaw, he serves as facilitator for the chamber’s business law workshops. “There is something rewarding about helping somebody else achieve a dream.”

Phan has his own dream for the chamber: “We lay the groundwork for future generations to serve the community better. In a year or two we are going to have a paid, full-time director.”

For his work with the chamber and AABAC, Phan this year received the Vision of Excellence Award from the Metropolitan Business League, a Richmond-based group promoting small and minority-owned businesses. In 2005, he was named a Richmond History Maker by the Richmond Valentine History Center, Greater Richmond Chamber of Commerce and Leadership Metro Richmond.

Phan says his efforts with AABAC and the chamber are his way of giving back to a country that offered him an opportunity to build a new life. “I was bare-handed when I came here.”