QUYNH TRAN

How did your upbringing, family, or culture shape you as a creative?

I was born and raised in Vietnam. Nothing about my country is ever simple. Our history, culture, language, religions, traditions, superstitions, and art are all deeply layered, and so are the ways we express them. It’s beautiful, but it also means everything tends to get more abstract, poetic, and intricate than it needs to be. Growing up, I admired that richness but never quite fit into it. I have the attention span of a fruit fly and no patience for endless dissection. I’m more of a direct, what’s-your-point type of person. That’s shaped the way I approach work as a creative. Clear and sharp.

What’s your breaking into advertising story?

After high school, I decided the smartest move was to go live in a country I had never been to, on a continent I had never seen, where people spoke a language I didn’t know. I flew across the world to join Miami Ad School Germany to be the youngest in my class and probably the least prepared. My English at the time was so academic that it sounded like I was writing essays out loud, which meant that half the time people had to try to understand me. I was also painfully shy and froze in front of my entire class more than once.

The one thing I did have going for me was a completely unhinged obsession with advertising. By the time I got there, I had already watched and catalogued campaigns from every corner of the globe. I was that student who always raised their hand, always had an example, and I wasn’t even sorry. All my classmates found that amusing. Some teachers found it borderline annoying. My logic was simple. If you’re an author, you should know the greatest books. If you’re an architect, you should know the greatest buildings. And if you’re in advertising, you should know the greatest campaigns.

“My logic was simple. If you’re an author, you should know the greatest books. If you’re an architect, you should know the greatest buildings. And if you’re in advertising, you should know the greatest campaigns.”

That obsession turned into a project called lovetheworkmore.com, a website where every Cannes-winning campaign is hyperlinked to wherever they are free to view. It took me hours, days, months, but it never felt like work because it was the most “me” thing I could possibly do. That project put my name on the map and got me a job in the States. So yeah, I wouldn’t call it “breaking into advertising.” I prefer saying, “being so me about the thing I loved that people had to notice.”

How do you navigate being your authentic self in corporate creative spaces?

I’m very often told that I need to chill. Chilling is not a skill I was born with. My lack of chill is both my superpower and my greatest flaw. I have very little patience, I hate when things move slowly, and I get loud when they don’t move at all. I ask a lot of questions, and I push hard. The reason is simple. I just want to make more. More ideas, more work, more everything. So how do I navigate authenticity in corporate creative spaces? I don’t. I just work in places where my lack of chill is treated as an asset instead of a problem. And I don’t plan on working anywhere that doesn’t.

If you could change one systemic barrier in the creative industry, what would it be?

According to the US government, I am what they call an “alien with extraordinary ability in the sciences, arts, education, business, or athletics,” which is basically the category a lot of us in this industry fall into when we get to call the States home. I live and work here on an O-1 visa, and while I am deeply grateful for the opportunity, it’s also a curse I wish I could shake every day.

This visa requires me to prove my professional accomplishments every three years through awards, recognitions, and publications. That means I and thousands of others like me have no choice but to stay on top of our game, work longer hours, be louder, chase awards, and fight harder for opportunities, because those opportunities literally determine whether we can remain in the country.

“This visa requires me to prove my professional accomplishments every three years through awards, recognitions, and publications... those opportunities literally determine whether we can remain in the country.”

Lately, the industry has spent a lot of time debating how unworthy awards can be, arguing that they shouldn’t be the North Star. Some even call for boycotts. And while that’s fine if you can afford to take a principled stand, it’s easy to forget that for people on visas like mine, awards are not optional. They are our survival. The O-1 creates a halo effect that pushes us toward the wrong goal, chasing awards not because we love them, but because our ability to stay here depends on them. It has fundamentally skewed how we see success, what we think our jobs should be, and what the industry should value.

I’m not a politics junkie. I don’t know enough to debate policy in depth. I’m clearly not a fan of the president that I didn’t vote for. I know systemic changes take years, if not decades. But if I could rub an Aladdin lamp and make a wish, I would fix how the Visa system works and what it requires for creatives, so the industry I love doesn’t feel like a trap to survive in.

What’s your best hack for overcoming creative block?

Find a liberating partner. I know this isn’t a typical band-aid solution or a psychological mind hack that works wonders when the creative block hits, but having someone who unleashes your brain from the very get-go will make all the difference. I’m not a lone thinker. My brain works best when I can talk things out. And looking back, some of the times I felt stuck were just a result of not having the right creative chemistry.

My current partner gives me a space of yeses, where everything is a possibility. Despite coming from different cultures (me, Vietnamese, and him, Italian), we’ve both worked in different markets, met with unique points of view, and share the same humor, standards, and goals. That’s when things really start to move effortlessly. It’s not rocket science – when you get to be yourself, you won’t shut up, and you won’t stop creating.

“It’s not rocket science – when you get to be yourself, you won’t shut up, and you won’t stop creating.”