About Me — Mark Nguyen
Hello fellow writers and readers,
Mark here, born in Vietnam and since the pandemic, a remote nomad living between East|West coasts while teaching at NewU in Washington DC and in California and Vietnam.
Global business professor, songwriter and founder of Planet LA Records. LGBT orientation, cross-cultural connector and yogi. Write stories, compose songs and a filter of the ebb and flow of life and love.
Global journey
My global journey began during college at UCLA when I did internships at the U.S. Department of State in Washington D.C. and the U.S. Embassy in Vientiane, Laos, then after graduation as a Fulbright Fellow at the National University of Singapore. I later studied international affairs at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University and worked at the World Trade Organization in Geneva, Switzerland and multinational firms and had a jet-set career that resulted in Million Miler status and lifetime travel perks.
Entrepreneur & mindful path
After over a decade in corporate work, I returned to Los Angeles to pursue my creative passions and became an entrepreneur with the launch of Planet LA Records in 2009. The starts and struggles took me back to school in pursuit of an MBA degree at UCLA Anderson and its partner program at the National University of Singapore. This pause also led me on a mindfulness path as a yoga instructor and practitioner of meditation. I try to share these lessons as a professor of international business and business ethics at U.S. colleges and universities abroad since 2016.
Creative works
For over a decade, I have collaborated with longtime co-writer Juan Andres Lizarazo based in Bogota, Colombia and artists from around the world to bring to life stories both real and imagined as part of the musical project When Planets Align. Also am a member of ASCAP and a voting member of the Recording Academy (“Grammys”). Feel free to check out my songs on Apple Music, Spotify or YouTube:
