By Sharon Simonson
Xuan Ha, former director of San Jose’s Vietnamese American Business Association, has joined the city of San Jose’s Small Business Ally Program as a small business coach. She speaks fluent Vietnamese.
The Business Ally program helps San Jose entrepreneurs find the best location and then navigate the city permit process to complete remodeling or other work including new business registration.
Immigrants own about half of San Jose’s 56,000 small businesses—those employing fewer than 35 people.
Vietnamese-Americans, including refugees, immigrants and their U.S.-born children, constitute the largest Asian population in the city of San Jose with 104,000 people, according to the most recent Census Bureau statistics. Seventy-five percent are foreign-born and nearly 60 percent “speak English less than very well.”
While she was at the Vietnamese American Business Association, it promoted international trade and investment as well as networking and advocacy within the Vietnamese-American business community in California, Texas and Vietnam. The organization was previously named the Vietnamese American Entrepreneur Association. Xuan Ha can be reached at xuanloc.ha@sanjoseca.gov
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