Changemaker: Ngoc Thach proves the power of a well-crafted story

The most compelling stories tend to have a few elements in common.

There are plot twists.

There’s character development.

There’s a strong moral.

And, though she’s only 31, Ngoc Thach’s story has all that and more.

But maybe that’s fitting for a born storyteller.

“That’s how you connect a community. You tell them your story,” said Thach, who graduated from Bishop O’Gorman High School in 2008 and recently returned to Sioux Falls.

“That’s become almost cliche in our world, but it’s what works.”

Ngoc – whose name is pronounced like “nahk” — Thach became a storyteller out of necessity. She immigrated with her family from Dong Nai, Vietnam, at age 2. Her brother was 7. And she became the voice for the family.

Thach’s family lived just outside Saigon, now Ho Chi Minh City, and faced the challenge of discrimination. Thach’s paternal grandmother was Vietnamese. She died at age 29, run over by a tank, and orphaning three children she’d borne with U.S. servicemen.

“My paternal grandmother was known as ‘the dragon lady’ and was never married,” Thach said. “And she was one of the only women I know in Vietnam to own businesses. She owned bars.”

But children born to biracial parents in Vietnam faced “heavy discrimination … and there was a refugee program for kids who came out of those situations,” Thach said. “My mother did all the work to get us to be part of the program.”

When they left Vietnam, they spent six months in the Philippines learning how to do things like shop at a grocery store before coming to Texas, then Sioux City and finally the Vietnamese community in Sioux Falls through a Lutheran Social Services program.

Thach was 4 years old when the family arrived in Sioux Falls, and following a separation, she was raised by her mother, who was a housekeeper at the former Radisson hotel.

“I have lots of memories from the hotel laundry room growing up,” she said.

A chance meeting with Sen. Tom Daschle, who used to stay at the Radisson, connected Thach’s mother with the resources to bring her parents to the U.S. Other family followed.

“They all made families here, and there are nieces and nephews, and I have four cousins here in Sioux Falls,” Thach said.

She started to learn English in kindergarten and learn to read between first and second grades. She enrolled at St. Lambert Elementary in third grade.

“The Catholic school community created really that first community that I leaned on,” she said. “And as a first-generation immigrant, learning how important community and communicating with that community is was really one of my biggest lessons early on in life.”

She flourished at school, becoming student body president by her senior year in high school and editor-in-chief of the newspaper while working in the business office.

“One of the valuable things I saw was we didn’t have money to do extracurriculars or sports that weren’t free,” she said. “I did competitive speech and oral interpretation. I did everything free and saw myself really growing a skill set in general ways but at the same time seeking excellence in everything I did. Building through the formative years that way really made me who I am today.”

It led her to USD, where she studied international relations and was named an Al Neuharth scholar and editor of the Volante student newspaper.

Shortly before graduation, everything changed.

Thach’s mother had a heart attack, leaving her unable to work.

So her daughter left USD and started three jobs. At one point, she was a manager at one restaurant, a server at another and a bartender at a third.

“So I could be up at 6 a.m. getting the coffee shop and restaurant started, working until 2 or 3 a.m. to close a bar,” she said.

“It was only a couple years,” she continued, without a hint of irony or sarcasm.

“I ran myself a little ragged.”

She never finished college and “was just focused on making money from there,” she said. “So I learned a variety of skills.”

A job as a legal assistant at a Sioux Falls firm introduced her to the business world, and a job at an auto dealer introduced her to working in sales.

The sales background led to Aberdeen, where she joined My Place Hotels of America in 2015.

“And that’s where the writing and journalist traits I had were actually applied because we didn’t have anyone in the workforce who really had the proclivity toward public relations and communications.”

Within 10 months, she was named director of public relations for the rapidly growing hotel chain.

“And I really instilled my own style into that field, and it stood out,” she said. “I think the way we told the My Place story helped it become one of the darlings of the industry.”

Once again, she was on her way up. By 2020, she was vice president of communications for My Place, which had grown to 58 properties nationwide.

She thought she’d reached a pinnacle in her career.

And then came a reminder of what really mattered.

Her mother was diagnosed with cancer. The family focus that had driven all her decision-making to date already came even more acutely into play.

“Everyone thinks I come from New York, and they’re always surprised to learn I never left South Dakota once I arrived,” she said. “And the main reason is my family. I just couldn’t imagine being so far from my mom. Even looking at job offers, a stickler for me was to be able to come back to Sioux Falls on a monthly basis or just to be with my family because I don’t think anything can replace that time.”

Knowing there might not be as much time left as she hoped has been its own sort of blessing, she continued, forcing the family to prioritize spending time together and capitalizing on each moment.

It’s also helping Thach forge her own next step. Like her grandmother, she’s now a business owner. She formed Mix Maker in late 2020.

The storyteller has started a new chapter.

Mix Maker is a marketing, public relations and communications agency that brings together independent contractors specializing in photography, writing, audio and video.

“I look at the makers as the stakeholders of Mix Maker,” Thach said. “Seeing the freelancers’ community and my exposure to other solo-preneurs doing their own thing helped me recognize on the community side they need a core of business services and business development and communications at the top of the list. People who have gone out on their own … like to focus on what they do best, and self-promotion and sales and sometimes client relations aren’t necessarily part of that.”

She paraphrases a quote by John Steinbeck – “A story doesn’t last unless it includes everyone” – as a guiding philosophy.

“That statement speaks to the fact that if we really want to grow an audience we really need to account for what resonates with them,” she said. “What transpired over my career over the last 10 years was realizing that I really needed to tell stories in a way that positioned the listener as a hero in that story, and that reaches them, puts them in a movie scene where they can clearly see the problem … and see themselves as part of that problem and empowers them to resolve that issue. That is really the framework behind all the marketing components Mix Maker can produce.”

Business ownership and her focus on public relations helped her refocus her priorities, she said.

“I’m growing to love the person who was, but I see my ego and my ambition and the person who wanted to win everything,” she said. “That didn’t add any value to the community, to win a competition or be elevated as a singular entity. It didn’t create more meaning for my life. It didn’t provide more direction for me. When I learned I could help others win while winning, and that’s what winning actually looks like to me, it really altered the way I operated.”

Case in point: Thach was spending time online early this year when she was moved to reach out to MarketBeat founder Matt Paulson, who was promoting his involvement in the Downtown Burger Battle organized by Downtown Sioux Falls Inc.

“I saw what Matt was doing and thought it was compelling and impactful and something I could really lend my time to,” she said. “I was working on setting up portfolio pieces, and a communications playbook was something I wanted to prove as a product, so I offered that up to Matt.”

She ended up running social media, copywriting and producing infographics and a press release for the record-setting  Downtown Burger Battle, which became a fundraising success for Call to Freedom.

Its mission around human trafficking was familiar to Thach from her time in the lodging industry.

“So bringing that to MarketBeat and reorienting on the goodness of their intentions was important,” she said. “Being able to connect the value of what they are doing to the awareness piece was my mission.”

As a business owner whose focus is telling stories, she hopes to leverage both to benefit the Sioux Falls community.

She’s particularly drawn to the homeless, as “a part of me sees myself and my family in those people,” she said. “We were at Children’s Inn a little bit growing up, and the ability to give back and share my story with them is impactful. To give someone an idea of what they could be and what they could rise out of moves me. I counted on people like that too.”