Phuc Nguyen

Phuc Nguyen—2016 Fellow

Year: Class of 2018
Major: Applied Mathematics/Statistics
Organization: Committee for Professional Policing, The New Impact Fund

This summer, I worked with the Committee for Professional Policing, which addresses police misconduct in Minneapolis, and the New Impact Fund, which makes social-impact investments in local minority-owned businesses.

The Committee for Professional Policing is working to reduce police misconduct through a ballot initiative that, if passed, would require police officers to carry professional liability insurance in Minneapolis. My main project was to profile the initiative’s base supporters using their demographics information. I also worked with other staffs and board members of the organization in organizing, cleaning our database and planning volunteer events to raise support and donations for the initiative.

The New Impact Fund is doing research on the landscape of minority-owned businesses in Minneapolis. I worked closely with the senior researcher on a literature review of characteristics of successful minority-owned businesses and minority-entrepreneurs, their capital needs and lending discrimination.

Working with my partner organizations, I better understood racial disparity from two standpoints–police brutality and inequalities in business ownership, investment, and opportunities in communities of color–and their interrelationships. During the ten weeks, I learned first-hand about the process of establishing a non-profit organization and a political campaign, and ways in which qualitative and quantitative studies could be used to support the work of these organizations. I’m grateful for the opportunity to meet and learn from my Chuck Green cohort, and to contribute to my partner organizations’ work on tackling racial disparity.