Astronaut, Advocate and rape-survivor Amanda Nguyễn takes the stage for an unfiltered conversation about sexual violence and the systems that perpetuate it, about race, identity, and diaspora, and about what it means to reclaim your life—and your dreams—in the aftermath of the unthinkable.
In 2013, three months before graduation, Amanda Nguyễn was raped at Harvard.
The daughter of Vietnamese war refugees, Nguyễn had spent her life defying the odds—studying astrophysics, interning at NASA, dreaming of the stars.
To protect her career, she filed her rape kit anonymously, to discover the state would destroy the evidence if not renewed, a bitter biannual marker, simply to preserve her chance at justice.
She had two choices: accept a system designed to silence survivors or rewrite the law.
She rewrote the law.
This is not a keynote. It is a reckoning, a testament, and a call to action—from one of the most extraordinary voices of her generation.