User:Thaovanessatran/sandbox/Thao V. Tran

Thao V. Tran
Thao V. Tran
Born	Thao Phuong Tran; July 31, 1985; East Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
Nationality	Australian-born Vietnamese
Education	Methodist Ladies' College, La Trobe University, Monash University, National Institute of Dramatic Art
Known for	Artist & Marketing Strategist
Website	www.vanessatran.co

Thao Vanessa Phuong Tran (/tiːảəʊ/ Tao; born July 31, 1985) is an Australian content producer, artist and entrepreneur. The youngest of three children, Thảo (also known as Thao) was born in a family of Vietnamese refugees.

Name

Thao's first name, a unisex name, means beautiful in English and respectful of parents in Vietnamese. Her middle name, Vanessa Phuong, means the God of Love in Latin and butterfly in Greek.

The name Thao is originally derived from the Chinese religion Taosim (/ˈtaʊɪzəm/, /ˈdaʊɪzəm/) or Daoism (/ˈdaʊɪzəm/). It refers to either a school of philosophical thought (道家; daojia) or to a religion (道教; daojiao); both share ideas and concepts of Chinese origin and emphasize living in harmony with the Tao (Chinese: 道; pinyin: Dào; lit. 'Way', 'Thoroughfare' or Dao). The Tao Te Ching, a book containing teachings attributed to Laozi (老子), together with the later writings of Zhuangzi, are both widely considered the keystone works of Taoism.

Thao is also of Greek origin, from the Ancient Greek word theos (θεός), which means god. It is also of old Germanic origin "theud", meaning "people" or "folk".

In 2006, Thao changed her name to Vanessa for career and personal reasons, as it starts with 'V' for her birth town Victoria, her ethnicity being of Vietnamese descent. Vanessa also includes 'ness', the suffix of emotional words, such as adaptedness and agelessness. Thao has used the name Vanessa from 2006 to 2022, working in corporate jobs and ad agencies.

However, she prefers the name Thao Vanessa Tran, as the acronym "TVT" forms a palindrome.

Family life

Thao comes from a family of five. She is the daughter of mother Trần Kim Hương, and father Trần Văn Thuận. She has two brothers, Trần Ngọc Hải and Trần Thế Lân. Unfortunately, her eldest brother, Anh Hải passed away as a baby from aspiration.

In 1983, Thao's father escaped the Vietnam War from the VietCong's reeducation camp after being held captive for over five years. Her father attempted to escape prison four times without Thao's mother present, but was unsuccessful and was recaptured. On the fifth attempt, with Thao's mother, along with her father's younger brother Trần Hữu Hạnh, the escape was a success. The family traveled by boat and had to endure pirates along the way, with all women and children on the boat needing to hide. Miraculously, they safely arrived at Bidong Island, also known as Pulau Bidong Refugee camp, in Malaysia. When they landed safely in Malaysia, this was the first time that Thao's mother Kim Hương star gazed. The Tran family had the option to migrate to United States, Canada or Australia. Within three months, Qantas Airways luckily flew the family to Australia.

Growing up, Thao's family learnt the art of grit and mateship. Her father was a welder, before both parents decided to start a business as sewing machinists for iconic Australian brands including Country Road. Each day, Thao's parents would sew day and night from 5:00am to 1:00am, but always made the time to prepare dinner together at home, without distractions such as television. Thao's family, especially her mother, valued quality time and community. Thao's father valued the safety for his children, especially for Thao. He drove her to school daily and ensured he prepared pieces of cut seasonal fruit, from apples to oranges to mangoes, for her when he picked her up from school.

At 19, Thao moved out of home and lived in Sydney's Northern Beaches. In 2019, Thao moved to Doha, Qatar to work for Qatar Airways, who then moved back to Melbourne during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Language school

Thao's parents always valued the power of education, since they could not have an education growing up. In the 1990s, her parents sent her to numerous tuition schools across Victoria, including Kumon where she learnt English and Mathematics.

Thao was always fond of writing at a young age. Thao wrote a fictional story for the Fairfield Railway Competition. She won the competition, and subsequently was featured in a local Leader newspaper.

Thao's parents also valued the importance of language. The family only spoke Vietnamese at home, and every Sunday, Thao’s father drove her to Richmond West Primary School, where she learnt Vietnamese on top of learning Greek in elementary school and Japanese in high school. At the end of every year, Thao was awarded prizes for being in the Top 3 of her classes. Thao was mostly awarded first or second prize each year, and was fortunately featured on Melbourne community television, Channel 31.

Education

1988-1989: Kindergarten

Thao attended kindergarten at Yarralea Children’s Centre. At kindergarten, her earliest memory was meeting her friend Danielle, and the two of them stuck many stickers of bees on both their arms.

1990-1997: Elementary school

In prep, Thao's mum encouraged her to enter a writing competition from the local newspaper, a letter to Santa. Thao's wish was to have a dog for Christmas. That Christmas, her wish came true. She won the competition and received an Australian $5 note, as well as received a pure black German Shepherd puppy named Zorro.

Thao studied elementary school at Alphington Grammar School, an independent, co-educational secondary school located in Alphington, Victoria, Australia, established by the Orthodox Community of Melbourne in 1988. Her first best friend in elementary school was, and always will be Melanie Devic (née Vukovic).

From a young age, Thao was also a budding entertainer.

At 10 years old, Thao began taking dancing lessons. At 12, Thao choreographed a dance group with her elementary school friends, called The Scotch Girls.

At 16, Thao represented Australia at the Centenary of Federation Parade at the Vietnamese float, holding the Vietnamese Nón Lá ‘K’ and ‘Y’, bridging the gap between the words ‘thank’ and ‘you’.

Thao's parents had also bought her a Yamaha piano, where she performed songs such as The Clown by Dmitri Kabalevsky, Heal The World by Michael Jackson and Für Elise by Ludwig van Beethoven. Although she learnt piano for three years, she never never took or passed any grade exams. She had performed at a morning assembly and at an evening piano recital.

Thao was also into sports, and enjoyed playing basketball and volleyball, and track and field.

She completed elementary school from AGS in 1997.

1998-2003: High school

Thao attended high school Methodist Ladies’ College (MLC), an independent, non-selective, day and boarding school for girls. She was allocated to the high school fraternity house, Nevile house, with the mascot as the Pink Panther, where she was encouraged to participate and contribute to the House in activities including music, drama, debating, and track and field.

Thao's strongest subjects were English, creative multimedia and information processing and management. She wrote essays about taking the Middle Way, performed Shakespeare, studied icon Michael Jordan, musical superstar Billy Joel, fashion icon John Galliano. She also had a keen interest in digital media and filmography, studying films Romeo & Juliet and Breaker Morant and books including Girl With A Pearl Earring. Thao received top grades in Junior Secondary School for performing Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice. However, she did not believe she was good enough to become an actress. Instead, she decided to focus on other related areas such as English, mathematics and chemistry and creative multimedia. To keep her love for the arts, Thao built a miniature sized model of the Shakespeare Globe Theatre out of balsa wood, and also digitally designed Nevile performing arts production poster.

Keeping active, Thao played tennis, volleyball and table tennis (aka ping pong) in high school. As volleyball captain, Thao began to learn the value of teamwork and leadership. In 10th grade, she represented MLC at the National Young Leaders Conference in 2001.

Career and Work Placement

Constantly curious about the world, Thao was eager to learn as much as possible. Thao did five short-term placements with employers to gain more insight into the industry and the workplaces. These work placements were in nursing, pharmaceuticals, dentistry, multimedia and a talent agency.

At 14, Thao became her entrepreneurial journey. As a private tutor, teaching English and Mathematics to students in Melbourne, mostly starting out with teaching family friends' children. Her students was inspired by the way she taught the relationship between the written word and mathematics, such as algebra.

MLC Marshmead

Among all the co-curricular activities MLC offered, Thao’s favorite high school memory was and still is Marshmead, a sustainable outdoor education campus in Mallacoota. Her most treasured memory was seeing five shooting stars one night whilst frog spotting during midnight.

Thao graduated high school from MLC in December, 2003.

2004-2015: University

Thao studied at university for 13 years whilst working full-time.

At 19, Thao went on to study the Bachelor of Podiatry at La Trobe University, one of Australia's only accelerated podiatry courses. Thao was also offered to study information systems at The University of Melbourne but instead selected podiatry in the hope to make her parents happy by studying a health science course. During one class, a footwear representative showed the class a pair of New Balance sneakers to the students. Immediately, Thao believed that she would much prefer to learn how to make sneakers, promote sneakers, and sell sneakers. This led to her calling to venture into marketing and sales. She believed that a business and commerce degree would be the perfect opportunity to continue her passion for entrepreneurship. But there was one main issue. Her marks from her podiatry degree were average, failing anatomy and physiology subjects, even though she excelled in dermatology and clinical practice with patients. Fearing that she would disappoint her parents by leaving her podiatry degree, Thao secretly studied a year of Arts at La Trobe University, hiding it from mainly her family and friends. In her Arts degree, Thao chose to study what truly intrigued her, what she was curious about and selected anthropology, linguistics and creative writing. Although she only studied one years of arts, it was truly one of the most rewarding moments of her life.

Her Arts studies in human behaviour, marketing and sales, led her to study the Bachelor of Psychology and Management/Marketing at Monash University. To enter the course, she wrote a letter to her desired course, which at the time was the then Bachelor of Psychology & Management/Marketing. She was successful in transferring from the Arts degree to study new topics in psychology, management and marketing at Monash University. The course became obsolete, and eventually transferred to a business and commerce degree.

Thao graduated from a Bachelor of Business and Commerce at Monash University on at Federation University, on July 13, 2015.

Entrepreneurship

Since 14 years old, Thao has been a serial entrepreneur.

Her entrepreneurial businesses include:

Ditox: Ditox is a digital wellbeing organisation dedicated to helping you to improve your mental health, balance your digital experiences, and become reconnected with human connection.
Vanessa Tran: As a part-time freelancer, Thao redesigned businesses by reimagining their brands, designing websites, improving their user experience (UX) and updating their graphic design. Her clients included WISMOlabs, Intelligent Water Networks (IWN), Cana Strong, GBA Capital and Pearson.
Lions N Gazelles: Thao created her freelancing side hustle with the intention of working anywhere, anytime. Her clients included Sultan Resources, Red Mountain Mining, Pioneer Development Fund, Focused Fitness Melbourne, Dr. Genia Rozen, Super Combo Burgers and Green Bean Packaging. The name of her business was inspired by the African proverb, “Every day in Africa a gazelle wakes up. It knows it must run faster than the fastest lion or it will be killed. Every morning a lion wakes up. It knows that it must outrun the slowest gazelle or it will starve to death." The moral of this proverb is that "when the sun comes up, you better be running". Thao's idea of using this name is that when the sun shines, we must be grateful for the rising sun. However, we also must be grateful for the moon, for that is when the moon is up, we need to be grateful for rest.
FreshMinds Tutoring: During her first year of university, Thao launched FreshMinds Tutoring at Monash University's Clayton campus, Springvale campus, and various libraries within Melbourne. Thao applied the Montessori method of education, based on self-directed activity, hands-on learning and collaborative play in environments that were interactive, easy to learn and joyful, often including outdoor education. Her focus was on kindergarten students to elementary school children.
Beth Berriman: Thao developed the website and graphic design for artist Beth Berriman in Cornwall, England. Beth was Thao's first client after completing high school.
Private tuition: Starting out as a private tutor at 12 years old, Thao helped school students from various education levels, from kindergarten to high school.

Career

As a brand strategist and marketing professional, Thao has has diverse industry experience in branding, digital marketing, marketing strategy, advertising, social media, search engine optimisation (SEO), user experience (UX), project management and packaging design. She has had extensive background in marketing and has worked in various strategic marketing roles across the technology, education, aviation in local and global roles. Through her diverse global and entrepreneurial experience, Thao has an innate ability to relate, collaborate and develop strategic marketing communications plans with people from all walks of life. Thao is known for her original and tactical ideas ideas that have proven results in generating brand trust, brand loyalty, increased community engagement and human connection, whether the organization is business-to-consumer (B2C) or business-to-business (B2B). She has a genuine interest in creative writing, start-ups, website design and digital wellbeing. Her focus on digital content creation has allowed her to develop strong branding capabilities, execute impeding business demands in a timely fashion while maintaining a professional standard at all times.

Thao's digital resume can be found on LinkedIn.

Vanessa is currently working in the educational technology space at Keypath Education in Australia as a Senior Content Producer.

Philanthropy & Volunteer Work

While charity has a long history in Asia, philanthropy or a systematic approach to doing good remains nascent. As an Australian-born Vietnamese, Thao's parents always encouraged her to volunteer for charitable causes. As a budding philanthropist and humanitarian since 16 years old, her charitable efforts extend to charities, entrepreneurship and corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities for organizations.

Thao's philanthropic and volunteering highlights:

Ditox: In 2018, as the Founder of Ditox, Thao launched Ditox, a digital wellbeing company dedicated to balancing human connection with digital technology. Thao's vision is to help people redesign their lives, from being distracted to disciplined with technology. She aims to help people refocus, become more self-aware of their mental health, change their physiology and reconnect with others and themselves.
Voice Of Health: Thao is an Active Listener on Australia's peer-to-peer preventative mental health app that provides a safe place where people can connect and talk one-on-one with trained Active Listeners who empathise and understand others.
Recognition in Anthem Project (RAP): Thao developed the website for RAP, a visionary project by Peter Vickery QC to achieve recognition of Australian values and the First Peoples in the Australian National Anthem.
Häzel: Yannick Beaucaine, best known as Häzel is a French-Brazilian music producer, based in Melbourne, Australia. He is most recognized for his Hip-Hop and R&B productions and produced one of the songs on Gallant's Grammy nominated album Ology. Thao developed Häzel's digital and print press kit flyer, including concept and layout, and graphic design.
The Supreme Court of Victoria: Thao assisted the Supreme Court Judge of Victoria, Peter Vickery a judge of the Commercial Court, with the UX and graphic design of the RedCrest system, the Supreme Court of Victoria's electronic filing (eFiling) system. RedCrest users can use this system to initiate cases and file new documents relating to matters across the Court of Appeal, Common Law Division, Criminal Division, Costs Court and for all Commercial Court matters.
Uniting Youths 4 Charity Inc. (UY4C) Kris Kringle Ball: In 2006, with the help of her peers, Thao co-founded UY4C and held a Christmas Party at Hoyts Melbourne Central. Proceeds were donated to Make-A-Wish Foundation and Big Brothers Big Sisters Melbourne. Performers and guest acts included: Ricki-Lee Coulter, Little Red, MojoRising band, Marawa the Hula Hooper, Lavina Williams, Rosaline Yuen, 78 From Home band plus dancers.
Australian Marketing Institute (AMI): Thao assisted with economic empowerment for the Bright Sparks team.
Marketing Women Victoria (MWV): Thao joined the MWV team and assisted with the website, marketing and communications.
Australia's Centenary Federation Parade: In 2001, Thao represented Australian-Vietnamese people at the Centenary of Federation Parade in Melbourne. She wore an áo dài, a traditional Vietnamese dress, holding two nón lá, the Vietnamese conical hats, with the letters 'K' and 'Y'. These two letters symbolize the Australian-Vietnamese people's gratitude using the words Thank You.

Mental Health

From 2004 until 2015, Thao experienced an myriad of mental illnesses.

She was diagnosed with the following:

Due to mental illness, she also experienced 2 strokes, where she lost movement in her legs at a mall carpark, and then lost her speech when alone in a psychiatric hospital.

Thao's mental health has blessed her with 5 mental health episodes, each of which included hallucinations and life callings to become an actress, where she saw herself as one of Australia's best actors, convincing her to pursue an acting career.

Filmography & Musical Aspirations

As a child, Thao enjoyed a variety of musical genres, from pop, hip-hop and R&B. Her musical idols include Tupac Shakur, The Spice Girls, Queen, Beyoncé and Michael Jackson.

Her biggest filmography influences are Clint Eastwood, Eddie Murphy, Will Smith, Tom Hanks, Leonardo DiCaprio and Robin Williams, as well as Meryl Streep, Angelina Jolie, Elizabeth Banks, Anne Hathaway, Jennifer Lawrence and Rebel Wilson.

Thao dreams to become an inspiration to all generations, as an influential actress and global humanitarian.