Bee Nguyen

Bee Nguyen is a non-profit executive and Georgia state representative from Atlanta, Georgia. A member of the Democratic Party, she was elected during a special election in December 2017 to fill the seat vacated following Stacey Abrams' resignation in August 2017 to focus on her run for governor. Nguyen is the first Vietnamese-American elected to the Georgia House of Representatives.[1]

Bee Nguyen
Member of the Georgia House of Representatives from the 89th district
Assumed office
December 15, 2017
Preceded byStacey Abrams
Personal details
Political partyDemocratic
ResidenceAtlanta, Georgia
Alma materGeorgia State University
Websitewww.beeforgeorgia.com

Born in Ames, Iowa, Nguyen grew up in Augusta, Georgia [2] and attended Georgia State University,[3] and moved to Atlanta in 1999.[2]

She was previously the executive director of a non-profit organization[4] she founded, Athena Warehouse, a program to educate and empower girls in under-resourced communities. She is currently National Policy Advisor for New American Leaders.[5] In November 2018, BizJournals included her on a list of 40 under 40s.[6] Nguyen described her charitable work as helping to "focus her desire to reduce economic disparity".[2]

Political career

Following Abrams' resignation from the state legislature, four candidates announced efforts to succeed her, in what was described as possibly "the most racially diverse slate of legislative hopefuls in Georgia history", including "a white man, an African-American woman, an Indian-American man and a Vietnamese-American woman".[2] In addition to being the first Vietnamese-American to win election to the Georgia House,[1] Nguyen was the first Asian-American Democratic woman to hold a state office in Georgia.[2] In 2018, when Amazon.com was vetting cities for its proposed Amazon HQ2, expected to generate 50,000 jobs in the host city, Nguyen opposed several anti-immigration-related bills which she asserted were discriminatory in nature and hampered Atlanta's chances of being selected based on Amazon's stated preference for building in a community with a diverse population.[7] In June 2020, Nguyen was reported to have won the Democratic nomination for reelection to her seat by a wide margin.[8]

References
  1. "Georgia House runoff won by Bee Nguyen over Sachin Varghese". ajc.com. Retrieved 2019-01-11.
  2. Maya T. Prabhu, "Diverse array of candidates seeks Abrams' old House seat", The Atlanta Constitution (October 16, 2017), p. B4.
  3. https://justfacts.votesmart.org/candidate/biography/176752/bee-nguyen
  4. http://www.house.ga.gov/Representatives/en-US/member.aspx?Member=4917&Session=25
  5. https://patch.com/georgia/buckhead/bp--atlanta-heydays-profile-meet-atlanta-bee-nguyen
  6. https://www.bizjournals.com/atlanta/news/2018/11/09/40-under-forty-georgia-house-of-representatives.html
  7. Ben Nadler, "'Adios Amazon': Tech Giant sparks Georgia Capitol debate", Decatur Herald & Review (February 14, 2018), p. C3.
  8. "Georgia Statewide Results", The Atlanta Constitution (June 12, 2020), p. A8.
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