Thanh Tân is a Vietnamese American storyteller, filmmaker, and cultural worker based in Seattle, Washington. An award-winning journalist who began her career in local television newsrooms, she reports and writes to spark dialogue and drive change — work featured on This American Life, The Texas Tribune, The Seattle Times, The Boston Globe and The New York Times. As a brand storyteller, she led global multimedia initiatives for Microsoft and shaped mission-driven narratives at Starbucks. Today she works independently, directing documentaries and building cultural archives rooted in the Vietnamese and Southeast Asian diasporas. Drawn to history and her identity as a daughter of Vietnamese boat refugees, Thanh created and hosted Second Wave, a podcast from KUOW and PRX centering the postwar Vietnamese refugee experience. She later co-founded Viet Fact Check to combat misinformation in Vietnamese-speaking communities, and in 2021 helped launch Viets for Afghans, a Vietnamese American–led mutual aid effort supporting Afghan refugees. That work led to her directorial debut: Refuge After War, a five-part docuseries for KCTS/Crosscut. Thanh is also a sought-after interviewer and moderator of conversations about the Asian diaspora, politics, and culture. She has facilitated talks for organizations including Seattle Arts & Lectures, King County Public Library, Town Hall Seattle, the Diasporic Vietnamese Artists Network, and PeaceTrees Vietnam. Her featured subjects have included Viet Thanh Nguyen, Amanda Nguyen, the late Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, Ken Burns, and Lynn Novick.
