The Family Business CEOs to Watch Class of 2023 recognizes 23 exceptional business leaders. The CEOs honored run the gamut of family business leadership, from entrepreneurial founders to fifth-generation stewards of a multifaceted enterprise to non-family executives trusted by the family ownership group to lead and expand their operations.
Tâm NguyỠn
Chairman and CEO | Second generation | Advance Beauty College, Garden Grove, Calif.
Tâm NguyỠn leads Advance Beauty College with his sister, Linh. More than 40,000 graduates have been trained at the beauty school, whose educators speak English, Spanish, Vietnamese and Farsi. Many of the graduates have become business owners.
Nguyá» n earned a bachelor's degree in biological sciences from the University of California, Irvine, an M.D. degree from the American University of the Caribbean and an MBA from California State University, Fullerton. Since 2016, Nguyá» n has taught business management at Cal State Fullerton as a part-time faculty member. He is a past president of Cal State Fullerton's alumni association and founding president of its Vietnamese American MBA alumni chapter.
Nguyá» n is a member of the U.S. Bank Orange County Advisory Board and serves on many community boards. He is vice chairman of the Orange County Transportation Authority.
“When the pandemic hit in early 2020, many CEOs spent their time wondering and worrying about how to keep their companies afloat, their employees working and their customers coming back. Tâm Nguyá» n certainly had those worries as well, but on Day 1 of the closures across the country, Tâm and a few of his beauty industry and family business friends jumped into action,” says Ed Hart, senior vice president at First Bank and director of its Center for Family-Owned Businesses.
“He and his colleagues launched what eventually became known as Nailing It For America. With PPE items and donations from restaurants, restaurant suppliers, friends and other family business leaders, Nailing It For America started taking care of frontline workers. His leadership created a wave of goodness and giving that eventually delivered over $30 million worth of food, items, clothing and money for those hit hardest by COVID.”
“In addition to many graduates of Advance Beauty College becoming entrepreneurs and business owners, Tâm's care and devotion to the success of his family business and many other organizations have made a measurable and meaningful difference in catapulting forward countless minority-owned and historically disadvantaged businesses,” says Ted Parker Nguyá» n, co-founder of Nailing It For America and senior manager of the Orange County Transportation Authority. (Ted Nguyá» n is not related to Tâm Nguyá» n.) “Many of the successes of these organizations' existing programs and new initiatives can be traced back to Tâm's work — mostly behind-the-scenes work.
“During the darkest days of the COVID-19 pandemic, I joined Tâm with several other family business leaders to start Nailing It For America. A year later, after his own mother and members of Nailing It For America experienced hate crimes, Tâm helped organize the first news conference in Southern California to mobilize efforts to combat the spate of anti-Asian hate along with the first-in-the-nation vigil with worldwide media coverage to mourn the deaths of Americans from COVID-19 and the brutal attacks on Asian Americans, other communities of color and members of the LGBTQ+ community.
“Although I know how difficult it was for him to not fulfill his refugee parents' dreams of having a doctor in the family, Tâm chose to utilize his leadership role in a different way. Today, the community in Southern California and the wider community in our nation are both beneficiaries of that choice.
“He not only understands the needs of the community but can communicate the public's desires and aspirations with his bilingual abilities as both a native English and native Vietnamese speaker. He is also immersed within the Latino community after working with Latino business and community leaders for decades.”
“I'm proud to be a second-generation family business owner with a legacy of overcoming unimaginable hardships and adversity, then triumphing thanks to the miracle of the U.S.,” Tâm Nguyá» n says.
“After the fall of Saigon marking the end of the Vietnam War in 1975, my proud father, who was a naval officer, fled with my pregnant mother and a 1-year-old son. We left our war-ravaged homeland with literally nothing but the clothes on our backs. And yet my parents still clung onto hope.
“We began our new lives settling in Southern California. Meanwhile in Northern California, in another place filled with hope, a group of Vietnamese women at a refugee resettlement camp called Hope Village were learning nail artistry from none other than Hollywood legend Tippi Hedren, star of Alfred Hitchcock's famed The Birds.
“Two years later, thanks to the grace and kindness of America, we literally grew up in our first family business, Tâm's Beauty Salon, leaning into my mother's skills as a hair stylist in Saigon. The name Tâm honored all four members of the first and second generation of our family and means ‘heart and empathy.' In 1987, my military father's vision of a beauty school to train other refugees in the beauty industry was realized with the opening of Advance Beauty College.
“I'm proud of my parents' legacy as part of that network of refugees that launched the modern-day nail professional. Starting in 2022, my sister, Linh, is now president and I serve as chairman of Advance Beauty College. We stand ready to lead our family business and our community, overcome whatever challenges come our way, so we may emerge even stronger and more resolute for the future that now includes the children of my family and my sister's family — the third generation of Nguyá» ns working together to further our storied family's legacy.”