Where it all started

Founder Anh Nguyen has over 20 years of experience in grassroots organizing and working with BIPOC small business owners. 

As a daughter of Vietnamese refugees,  Anh has intimate knowledge of the obstacles, barriers, and strategies of ethnic small business owners and has a talent for translating those experiences into community economic development plans to stem systemic displacement. Since 2001, Anh has worked with hundreds of small business owners from Boston’s Chinatown to Boston's Dorchester neighborhoods and from San Francisco's Tenderloin to Oakland. When the US Justice Department sued the City of Boston in 2005 for voter violations, Anh was asked to serve on the Voter Task Force and assist the City in implementing bilingual ballots. In 2007, the City of Boston appointed her as a member of Boston Connects, the City’s Economic Development Partner, charged with administering $190 million throughout Boston’s Empowerment Zone. She was asked to serve on the 2007 Boston Film Festival Committee, the year after Massachusetts introduced tax credits for the film industry. In 2013, Anh designed the "Closing the Digital Divide" framework and partnered with Square for San Francisco's Tenderloin. She was also ranked 2nd in the country behind the City of New York in small business loans through kiva.org. In her leadership position, Anh contributed to community benefit agreements between SF based tech companies and developers. In 2016, she was the keynote speaker at San Francisco’s Central City Democrats 10th-anniversary celebration and was honored by the Tenant Associations Coalition with its Community Impact Award. That same year, Anh returned to Boston and worked with MIT’s Department of Urban Studies and Planning to create an equitable design plan “Connecting Bowdoin Geneva: A Plan for Community and Commerce”.  

She also recruited Harvard Transactional Law Clinic to write “Commercial Leases 101” to disseminate to small business owners. The City of Boston also adopted her "Closing the Digital Divide" framework and invested $100,000 in POS systems and internet connection for small businesses. The framework was also introduced to the State of Massachusetts and she was the first to receive state funding as a Main Streets organization. Under her leadership, Bowdoin Geneva was chosen for the Boston Foundation’s Place Leadership, where Harvard Graduate School of Design helped realize the community’s dream to transform 20 parcels of land for sustainable production. Anh has also served on the City of Boston’s Arts Commission, redirecting funds to communities of color. As the creator of Salty Frank’s, a fast-food restaurant in Gloucester, MA, she can tell you of her challenges as a small business owner.

Anh has visited 47 states and 21 countries. She has been a resident of Florence, Italy, Boston, San Francisco, Oakland, and Inglewood. Now she resides in Atlanta with her husband Kwame and two children Hunter and Levi.

“I see myself as an organizer and public servant first”.