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By Sean Cushing, Loop Weekly (Excerpts)
This year’s guest speaker was Tram Nguyen, a Tenney alumni who is the first American-Vietnamese woman to run for office in Massachusetts. She is running in the 18th Essex district, which covers Andover, North Andover, Tewksbury, and Boxford. Up to this point, the feedback she has gotten has been outstanding.
“The support I have gotten has been overwhelming within the community and even outside of the community because I grew up in the Merrimack Valley,” Nguyen said. “I know what is it like and I want to be able to represent every voice as well as I can.”
“When you make the time to listen to people and bring them into your community, amazing things can happen,” Nguyen said. “I think the most important thing for these students to remember is that everybody has a story, and that you must take the time to listen to other people’s stories,” she said. “We have such a diverse community here, so we must value the commonalities and differences that we all have.”