Phuong
Vo Thi Lan

Phuong Vo Thi Lan has worked in public affairs in Vietnam since 1997. Phuong previously acted as a senior policy advisor to the USAID-funded Vietnam Competitiveness Initiative, as an advisor to various ministries and to Vietnam’s national assembly, and as a regulatory consultant to several business and non-governmental organizations.

During her two years with the Vietnam Competitiveness Initiative, Phuong was involved in assisting the government with the design and implementation of a regulatory reform program. She worked closely with international and local experts to deliver training programs on policy-making and economic governance to numerous government agencies, including the Office of the Government, the Ministry of Planning and Investment, and the Ministry of Justice. She also worked with public and private stakeholders in the drafting of new legislation, including the price law, the administration penalty law, the labor code, the codification ordinance, the mediation law, and the civil law. In the course of this work, she helped stakeholders from business and civil society express their interests in the policy process.

Phuong spent more than six years at the economic section of the US Embassy in Hanoi providing advice on Vietnam’s trade, labor, intellectual property, services, and investment regimes to US companies and assisting with the negotiation and implementation of the US-Vietnam trade agreement and Vietnam’s accession to the World Trade Organization. She was awarded an ASEAN scholarship and completed a master’s degree in public policy in economics at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy at the National University of Singapore. She also holds bachelor’s degrees in finance, English and computer science.