Viet Nguyen was born and raised in the cultural melting pot of Southern California. She became an advocate for human rights in college, raising awareness about world hunger and Oxfam, and lobbying for HIV/AIDS programs in Washington, D.C. This led to her receiving her public health graduate degree at UC Berkeley, where she studied infectious diseases and global health, investigating risk factors for Hepatitis B and C co-infections in HIV positive patients in Jos, Nigeria. She then returned to Southern California for medical school at UCLA, where she worked with Child Family Health International in Dehradun, India, and then later completed an HIV elective in Malawi. Her passion for advocacy and social justice drew her to the mental health field, completing psychiatry residency at UCLA, where she was the first community and global mental health chief resident. Viet has volunteered for Physicians for Human Rights, conducting asylum evaluations for victims of torture in Los Angeles, as she is particularly interested in refugee mental health. She was fortunate enough to create global mental health electives in Indonesia and rural South Africa during residency.