Diane Vy Nguyen-Vu stepped down as executive director of Maryland Vietnamese Mutual Association (MVMA) on December 31, 2011, when Mai Hien Tran, current office manager, assumed the role of acting executive director for six months.

The Board of Directors announced it would continue its search for a new executive director by February 29. It thanked Diane for her commitment to the executive transition process, and also her leadership in MVMA’s growth.

Over the last five years, Dianne was instrumental in leading MVMA. Anh Tran, chair of the MVMA board, noted: “Diane understood how to grow MVMA. She built the organization’s operations, increasing scale and scope of organization to meet programming needs, and created new partnerships for organizational sustainability.”

MVMA is a nonprofit organization that provides linguistically and culturally appropriate direct services to Vietnamese Americans. Started in 1979 by a group of volunteers, MVMA is the oldest Vietnamese American community based organization in Maryland.

Because of its reach in the community and its visibility, MVMA also serves as a liaison for many agencies to ensure that vital information reaches the Vietnamese American population. In 2008, MVMA was selected by the Harmon Foundation for inclusion in their Catalogue for Philanthropy as “one of the best small charities in the greater Washington Region.”