Thạc Sĩ Carina Hoang
                                                                                                                                                                  www.quangduc.com

From refugee to  PhD Curtin University, Perth, Western Australia 

Carina Hoang is an author, publisher and actor.

She is now an actress and award-winning author and publisher.

Carina escaped war–torn Vietnam on a wooden boat with her two younger siblings at the age of 16. She survived harrowing conditions in a refugee camp in Indonesia before being given the opportunity to go to the USA.

Since then she has earned a Bachelor of Chemistry, Bachelor of Arts with Honours in Gender and Cultural Studies, and Master of Business Administration. She has worked in the semiconductor, biotechnology and healthcare industries.

In 2006, Carina relocated to Perth and began assisting a number of Vietnamese families to find the graves of their loved ones in former refugee camps based in Indonesia. Carina completed a PhD (Humanities) at Curtin in 2018.

In 2018, with no acting experience, Carina was cast in the role of Iris in the ABC soap series The Heights. The show aired in 2019.

She is a former Vietnamese refugee and has been a Special Representative ò

Australia for UNHCR Special Representative since 2012 

Carina Hoang has led a life that sounds like the plot of a novel. 

Since 1998, Carina – who now lives in Perth and is an acclaimed author, refugee advocate and actor – has returned to Kuku Island several times to bring the families of those who perished there to visit the graves of their loved ones.

Over the years Carina has brought dozens of people back to Kuku Island, and in 2010 she released a book – Boat People – which told the stories of Vietnamese refugees.

“There are different layers to the suffering of refugees that we don’t hear about,” Carina explains.
Although she planned to make the trip last year her final visit, Carina said that as long as families keep asking her to help them say their final goodbyes to lost family members, she will stay open to returning to Kuku Island.