Doug Nguyen
Headshot of Doug Nguyen, Regional Communications Director

Doug Nguyen

Board Member

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Doug M. Nguyen was born in Vietnam and escaped from Saigon with his mother and sister in the last days of the war.  His father, a South Vietnamese army officer, had been a casualty of the war.  Doug grew up in Ft. Smith, Arkansas, and graduated from college in Oklahoma.   Doug holds M.A. Degrees in Communications from the University of Illinois at Chicago and Missiology from the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky.   He is a Mentor with the C.S. Lewis Institute in Chicago.

 

In his professional role Doug is the Regional Communications Director who oversees the public affairs program for the Social Security Administration’s (SSA) six-state Chicago Region.   Doug began his SSA career in 1994 as a Social Insurance Specialist and served as a Public Affairs Specialist for the Chicago Metro area. Doug is a frequent speaker for the National State Health Insurance Assistance Programs (SHIP) and co-presenter on the National Medicare National Training Programs.  Doug currently serves as the Great Lakes Regional Lead for the White House Initiative on AANHPIs (WHIAANHPI) and the Working Interdisciplinary Network of Guardianship Stakeholders (WINGS).  Doug is an alumnus of the Citizens Academy Programs of the Department of Justice’s FBI (2021) and ATF (2022).

 

Doug has received numerous federal awards, including the Presidential Award for Outstanding Volunteerism and Social Security Administration’s Acting Commissioner’s Citation for Diversity and Inclusion, and he was a previous awardee of the Chicago Federal Executive Board’s Outstanding Community Service.   He currently serves on the Boards of the Asian American Coalition of Chicago.  He is also a volunteer advisor with Exodus World Service, a social service agency connecting volunteers with new refugees.  During his free time, Doug serves as the missions and community outreach coordinator for the Uptown Baptist Church (UBC) in Chicago, Illinois, where he received his ministry ordination in May 2013.  He is responsible for planning UBC’s mission training and community outreach programs and organizing annual short-term mission teams to serve throughout North America and overseas.