Biography
Tran's family lived in Saigon, South Vietnam from her birth until they fled the country during the fall of her home city to the Communist forces in the spring of 1975, when she was almost eight years old. They escaped on a boat, then were picked up by a US Navy vessel. They were moved through various refugee camps, eventually making it to the United States, and settling in Orlando, Florida.
Tran earned a Bachelor of Arts from Agnes Scott College in Decatur, Georgia, in 1988. After taking a year off to earn money for tuition, she attended law school at the University of Utah College of Law, receiving her Juris Doctor in 1992. Tran's start in the non-profit legal services field started during law school, when she began volunteering at Utah Legal Services, a nonprofit agency providing free civil legal services to low-income families. There she specialized in payday loans, fair debt collection, unemployment compensation, child custody, and domestic violence issues.
After graduation, she decided to continue providing legal services to the underprivileged and received a fellowship to work at Legal Services of North Carolina. After her fellowship, she moved to Spokane Legal Services where she specialized in child custody cases involving abusive relationships for a year. In 1996, she began working at the Northwest Justice Project in Seattle. The next 10 years were at the Northwest Justice Project; the first eight were as a Staff Attorney working on advocacy for affordable housing and individuals facing housing discrimination or eviction, including co-authoring briefs submitted to the U.S. Supreme Court. Between 2004 and 2006, when she resigned her position to campaign, she was an Advocacy Coordinator, mentoring new attorneys and supporting other advocates at her organization.
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