SDSU Entrepreneur Goes From Dreaming It to Doing It

Name: Tammy Nguyen
Current Position: Founder, Tammy Nguyen Events Management
Major: Management/Entrepreneurship
Graduation Year: 2020

At first glance, Nguyen seemed like an unlikely candidate for a bachelor’s degree or a responsible business owner. “By the time I was in 10th grade, I dropped out of high school three times and by the time I was 19, I’d dropped out of college twice,” she said. “I had a college GPA of 1.80.” 2020 was an unusual year in many respects. Despite the challenges, San Diego State University alumna Tammy Nguyen fulfilled her dreams by both graduating from SDSU and starting her own company.  

Things began to change for her starting at the age of 21. “I had a dream of impacting the world in some way and I thought that starting a business would be the most effective way to do that,” said Nguyen. “I used to walk downtown and look through the windows at empty office spaces, wondering what my business would someday look like.”

In 2012, Nguyen’s mother invited her to go to an SDSU basketball game. “As I stepped on to the campus, I thought I’d really like to have the college experience,” she said. “But I was 30 years old at the time and I thought to myself ‘Tammy, you can’t go back to school because you’re too old and too dumb’ and I shoved it to the back of my mind. Six months later, when I was bored one day at work, I decided I wanted to learn something new and I enrolled in a business course at a community college.” 

Stepping on Campus and Into a New Mind Set

That one business course changed the trajectory of Nguyen’s life. “At the end of the course, I got an ‘A’. I never thought I could get an ‘A’ in anything before,” she said. “So, the next semester, I enrolled in two business courses and the semester after that, I took three courses and pretty soon, I was a full-time student.” 

“The Best Decision I Made at SDSU”

After earning her associate’s degree in 2017, Nguyen enrolled at SDSU to complete her bachelor’s degree and start her own business. “I always loved the idea of starting my own business, but I was also very intimidated by it,” she said. “That’s when I signed up for the Lavin Entrepreneurship program, even though I didn’t know what business I wanted to start. It was by far the best decision I made at SDSU.” 

Tam Nguyen throws her mortar board in the air to celebrate her graduation.

For three years, Nguyen was a student assistant at the Lavin Entrepreneurship Center at the Fowler College of Business where she was able to expand her knowledge and skills by managing the center’s events. “Event planning was something I have always been naturally good at,” said Nguyen. “Because of that, I was given the opportunity to run the center’s annual California Entrepreneurship Educators’ Conference for 2020.”

The Pandemic Sets Her Path

The conference, which was scheduled for April 16 – 18 was nearly cancelled when the COVID-19 pandemic shutdown all in-person conferences and events leading speakers and attendees to withdraw their participation. But instead of cancelling the conference — whose theme for 2020 was “Reimagine the Discipline of Entrepreneurship” — the center’s executive director, Alex DeNoble, called Nguyen three weeks before the conference was supposed to start and the two of them reimagined the whole event by putting it online and not charging anyone to attend. 

Initially, Nguyen and DeNoble weren’t sure if they would be able to attract speakers or attendees for the now-virtual conference, but they were in for a huge surprise: while they originally had 100 attendees signed up for the in-person conference, 748 attendees from all over the globe attended the online conference. 

"Alex DeNoble is my mentor. He always helped me to think like an entrepreneur and not a student."     -Tammy Nguyen, SDSU Alumne and Entrepreneur

For those SDSU students who are thinking about following her into the world of entrepreneurship, Nguyen has this advice:“Take care of anything that is put into your hands as if it is your own. There is value in taking ownership by helping to achieve someone else’s vision before achieving your own. When you take responsibility for tasks given to you by others, you have to think the way a business owner would think in order to successfully complete those tasks. This will also allow you to build relationships and trust that will help you when you start your own business.” 
While Nguyen has been busy helping organizations to move their events to an online format, she also has a short-term goal to build her team so that she can handle more business. She also plans to strengthen her brand and create a new name for her company so that it is “not single-person focused, but a bigger business focus.” By the time of the California Entrepreneurship Educators’ Conference, Nguyen had already decided she wanted to establish an event management company, but the success of the conference solidified that plan when two of the organizations involved with the conference connected with her to become her first two clients. “Because we were the first to use some of the new online platforms at the conference, those organizations asked me to speak to others about how to manage an online conference and I picked up more clients from there,” said Nguyen, now the founder and owner of Tammy Nguyen Events Management. “Since then, I’ve been able to help get about 20 events go from in-person to online in 2020 and I plan to gain more experience to become an expert in hybrid events.”