Reinvention through purpose: meet Amanda – someone who has transformed personal trauma into legal reform, global advocacy and fulfilled a childhood dream of going into space.
I have been following Amanda’s story for a while, I first came across her through doom scrolling on insta and naturally given my algorithm of a colourful mix of cute dogs, meal prep hacks, Asian cultural diaspora and inspirational quotes, I was targeted with Amanda’s powerful story. It was a bonus that she was of Vietnamese heritage, and her story moved me in such a way that I found myself going down a rabbit hole of wanting to find out everything about her.
What a brave and courageous human.
In her interview with Forbes1, she opens up about her experience as a rape survivor, and the criminal injustice she experienced with her rights (or lack thereof) in keeping her rape kit evidence when she chose to stay anonymous. From what would have been a dark place, she found immense courage to channel her pain into advocacy and social entrepreneurship in later founding Rise in 2014, ‘to bring equality to sexual assault survivors across the country and around the world’2.
With a clear purpose, she has spearheaded what could be argued as the most successful legislative reform movement in American history, she wrote and advocated for the Sexual Assault Survivor Bill of Rights which passed unanimously and was signed by Obama in 2016. This is not a mean feat, given that social justice bill’s can often take over a decade to come into fruition, let alone the odds of a unanimous vote being 0.016 percent7. Rise’s efforts have also resulted in 123 laws passed as well as 1 UN resolution (the first ever General Assembly resolution for survivors of sexual violence), changing the lives of an estimated 112m people2.
Amanda Nguyen, CEO and Founder of RISE, testifies before the United States House Judiciary Committee about the Implementation of the "Survivors Bill of Rights Act", 2018. Source credit: Wikimedia Commons
Just, wow!
She has been modelling an inspirational multihyphenate career, built on reinvention through purpose and I love her encouraging sentiment in the Forbes2 interview on being able to do it all.
“You can absolutely change the world and do whatever it is that makes you happy, and you can do both” – Amanda Nguyen
In 2014 when she was assaulted in her final year of Harvard, she put aside her dreams of becoming an astronaut, she pivoted out of necessity to advocacy and civil rights, but along her journey she has also worked at NASA, the white house and the state department, and in 2025 she fulfilled her childhood dream of going to space on Blue Origin’s 11th human spaceflight for the New Shepards program3,6.
Amanda Nguyen, CEO and Founder of RISE pictured far right. Source credit: Amanda Nguyen and Duke Winn
One of the most inspiring things about Amanda’s story is not only on how she has managed to push through very hard circumstances, but she has truly lifted others during the process. I remember reading an interview where she spoke about not necessarily needing the courage to go all the way, but to focus on having the courage to take the next step, and then the next one after that.
This illustrates her mental mapping and how she has approached her life’s work, leaving a strong legacy and many lessons for us all. She has created an ecosystem through Rise which empowers individuals to rewrite their own laws, whilst also offering survivors resources and tools and even a way for survivor’s to reclaim their power through donating their outfits to an art exhibition which has been shown in places like MoMa and the UN headquarters in New York. Her resilience and passion for advocacy truly inspires me.
If you would like to read more, I’ve included some useful links below from some articles that may be of interest. I have also ordered her memoir, Saving Five to read her story more intimately.
I hope you found Amanda’s story as inspiring as I have.
My personal reflection on her story evokes some confronting thoughts around my own journey experiencing sexual abuse and how my body and mind did not quite connect with what was happening to me. Given the fact that I was very young when I experienced being groomed, I think the mind and body became numb and uncannily good at self-preserving.
The traumatic realisation did not hit me until my late teenage years, and for decades I struggled to make sense of the events. I have been on my own healing journey and perhaps one day I will open up about it in the hope that it may help someone else, but for now I’m not quite there, and I think that is completely okay.
Amanda’s bravery makes me think about how people can transform their trauma into purpose, but also light the way for others to do the same. She embodies reinvention through purpose, overcoming her trauma to challenge the world’s view and the systems that make a traumatic experience unjustly harder.
Amanda, if you are reading this, thank you for being so brave and for helping so many.
Citations & Resources
1 Forbes — “Rise CEO Amanda Nguyen On Launching A Civil Rights Startup That Fights For Rape Survivors”, https://www.forbes.com/sites/tanyaklich/2019/03/08/rise-ceo-amanda-nguyen-on-launching-a-civil-rights-startup-that-fights-for-rape-survivors/
2 Rise Non Profit, https://risenow.us/about/
3 Pivotal — “Amanda Nguyen: ‘We Came On Boats, and Now We’re On Spaceships’”, https://www.pivotal.com/articles/amanda-nguyen-we-came-on-boats-and-now-were-on-spaceships
4 TIME — “Inside Amanda Nguyen’s Fight to Ensure Survivors’ Stories Are Taken Seriously”, https://time.com/collections/women-of-the-year/6150543/amanda-nguyen-interview/
5 TIME — “Senate Unanimously Passes a Sexual Assault Survivors’ Bill of Rights”, https://time.com/4346255/sexual-assault-survivors-rights-act-2/
6 BLUE ORIGIN — “Blue Origin’s New Shepard Rocket Completes 31st Mission To Space”, https://www.blueorigin.com/news/new-shepard-ns-31-mission
7 NBC NEWS — “‘30 Under 30’ Honoree Amanda Nguyen Is Fighting for Sexual Assault Survivors”, https://www.nbcnews.com/news/asian-america/30-under-30-honoree-amanda-nguyen-fighting-sexual-assault-survivors-n715661
8 AMANDA NGUYEN — Saving Five: A Memoir of Hope. AUWA Books; MCD/Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2025.
Comments