Awards
Outstanding Alumna Award - 2010
The Zeta Tau Alpha Foundation introduced the Outstanding Alumna Award at the 1982 Convention in Atlanta to recognize ZTA alumnae who have become outstanding leaders in their chosen professions, demonstrated significant accomplishments and made notable contributions to society. Many of the past recipients have also served the Fraternity in their post-collegiate years, but that is not a requirement for the award. These outstanding women serve as role models for all members of Zeta Tau Alpha and their informative and inspiring speeches are highlights of our biennial Convention. You can view all Outstanding Alumna recipients here.
Betty Nguyen
Kappa Chapter, The University of Texas at Austin
For Betty Nguyen, former anchor for the “CBS Morning News,” broadcast journalism isn’t just about telling people the news; it’s about showing them—being their eyes into the story.
Perhaps it is fitting that one of Betty’s favorite stories was about a young boy in Dallas who was losing his eyesight. By wrapping her camera’s lens, she was literally able to show viewers what it was like to see through the child’s eyes. For other stories, Betty has often been able to visually put into focus a problem happening a world away.
In 2008, for example, while working for CNN, Betty and her crew snuck into the country of Myanmar to cover the devastation of Cyclone Nargis, one of the deadliest cyclones in history. Over 100,000 had been killed in the storm and millions more were injured and being denied aid by the militant Myanmar government. In a country where foreign media was not allowed, Betty risked her own safety to be one of the few people to capture the story on film.
“It’s one thing to hear about something, but when you actually see it, that changes your whole perspective,” Betty says. “To be able to tell the world what is truly going on is important to me because I believe it is easy for the world to forget what it cannot see.”
Born in Saigon during the Vietnam War, Betty and her parents fled to the United States in 1975 when she was just one year old. When making her first trip back to Vietnam in 1998, Betty decided to go, not as a journalist, but as someone who wanted to take it all in for herself.
“I wanted to go back to my birth country, experience all of the things that my mother had told me about as a little girl, and finally be able to see it with my own eyes.” Betty recalls.
During this visit, Betty was able to get a better glimpse into her own history, meet aunts and uncles for the first time, and experience places that her parents had visited. What she also saw was a country full of poverty-stricken villages and millions living without basic necessities.
“I have always felt so very blessed and lucky that I got an opportunity to come to this place called America,” she says. “We left on one of the last cargo planes out of Vietnam as Saigon was falling to communism, and I was able to be an American and experience the freedom that provides. After that initial trip back to Vietnam, I was able to see with my own eyes those that could very easily have been me.”
Upon her return to the U.S., Betty began the process of starting Help the Hungry, a non-profit organization to aid those living in Vietnam. During its first 10 years, Help the Hungry has assisted over 100,000 Vietnamese citizens, and Betty has used her journalistic skills to shed light onto Help the Hungry’s mission.
“The organization couldn’t go without a voice, without being able to show the different areas we go to and the people we meet who are living in grass huts with dirt floors,” Betty says. “Being a journalist has allowed me to tell those stories and bring them to audiences here in America.”
Before joining CBS in 2010, Betty had worked as an anchor for CNN since 2004. Prior to that, she worked for CBS affiliates in Dallas and Waco, Texas.
Betty’s journalistic accomplishments, coupled with her work with Help the Hungry, have earned her several awards over the years, including the 2007 Golden Torch Award from the Vietnamese American National Gala, a 2008 My Hero Award from CNN, a 2008 Outstanding Young Texas Exes Award and a 2009 Andrew Heiskell Community Service Award from Time Warner, Inc. In 2007, she was also recognized by the Smithsonian Institute as the first Vietnamese-American to anchor a national television news broadcast in the United States.
“I never got into this business for the awards,” Betty says. “I truly got into this business because I had a desire to tell stories—to document life. And that’s what I am trying to do.”
From her eyes to ours.