When Khanh Le underwent successful surgery in South Florida, he and his wife, Lynne Tran, pledged they would make a lasting gift in the field of medicine to show their gratitude.
The California couple heard about NSU from Tran’s nephew, Thinh Tran, M.D., who is a member of the Executive Leadership Council at NSU’s Dr. Kiran C. Patel College of Allopathic Medicine (NSU MD).
Soon after, Le and Tran established the Khanh Le and Lynne Tran Endowed Allopathic Medicine Fund to provide scholarships and research support to students at NSU MD. In recognition of their gift, one of the college’s Problem-Based Learning Classrooms will be named the Khanh Le and Lynne Tran Classroom.
The couple’s story begins in their native Vietnam, where both lived until immigrating to the U.S. in the 1970s. Le and Tran met in 1981, when both were students at the School of Engineering at the Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C.
After graduating summa cum laude, Le was awarded a scholarship to Stanford University in California and moved there to earn a master’s degree. He later declined a spot in a Ph.D. program to accept a job in Silicon Valley, so he support his family, still struggling to settle in their new country.
By 1986, when Le and Tran got married, Tran was working as an engineer at Ford Aerospace and was part of the NASA Space Shuttle Program. After becoming a mother to the couple’s two children, she changed career paths. Today, Tran manages a bustling real estate business. Le is a successful entrepreneur and investor in Silicon Valley, where he founded several companies. Their adult children are now busy pursuing their own careers.
“We want to fulfill our pledge to contribute to the medical field in the best way we can,” Le said. “Not only to show our gratitude, but also help others like us. We know that training a new generation of doctors will provide a legacy of gratitude for other people whom these doctors will eventually help and cure. We are especially attracted to startup enterprises, like NSU MD.”
(originally published November 2019)