Team members

Doan Trang, PA

I have dreamt of becoming a medical doctor since childhood as I was growing up with uncles and aunts and cousins who were professionals in the medical field. It's a natural path for me to treat, care, and have compassion for others. But life changed when the Vietnam war ended and I came here in 1975. We were refugees in a family of 9 children. We had language barriers and our priority was to be able to care for aging parents. So I put aside my dream to become a physician, which would have been a long and arduous road. Instead, I applied to UCLA to become a chemical engineer - this would be a shorter and rewarding path. Upon graduation, I joined Xerox which had an extensive program to train women leaders. I was then blessed with a boy-and-girl twin. Having and raising this twin was a most miraculous experience and I would not have traded it for anything else. They however were tiny and weak, with many medical issues and speech problems because they were premature. And most egregiously, the boy was diagnosed with autism, difficulty learning, ADD, and mild case of Down syndrome. I knew the diagnosis was plainly wrong. I quit my job and stayed home for 7 years, to raise my children until they fully developed and caught up with other 5 year old children. I vowed to go back to the medical field, to forever fight for and protect them from all wrong diagnosis. I also went back to the Stanford/ Foothill programs for a surgical PA license. It was amazing training and afterwards I worked in the ER/ICU area mainly. I also joined several medical mission trips in VN 2004, 2010 and 2014 with VN Health Village where we treated patients in desolate areas, all over North (Sapa) Central (Hue, Vinh, Quang Tri) and South Vietnam. I took my daughter along those trips to instill in her the passion for the medical field and caring for others. I had continued to work in the hospitals, private MD offices, help with research for hepatitis patients for Stanford University, etc.

Member of: