Jewish Family & Career Services is proud to honor our MOSAIC Award recipients. These five individuals who call Louisville home have made significant contributions in their professions and our community. To date, JFCS has recognized almost 70 refugees, immigrants, and first-generation Americans who make our community richer and stronger for their work. We are excited to have Neeli Bendapudi, Di Tran, Berta Weyenberg, Kaveh Zamanian, and Bapion Ziba join the ranks of these remarkable individuals.
This is Di Tran’s story.
Di Tran was 12 years old when he fled Vietnam with his parents and three sisters to begin a new life. Knowing no one in the United States, they reached out to Catholic Charities who sponsored them to come to Louisville. His parents worked factory jobs, sleeping about five hours a night for five years until they saved enough to build USA Nails on Broadway.
After school, Di worked in the store every day. He went on to University of Louisville and earned a master’s degree in computer engineering and sciences while helping his mother to expand the number of nail salons they had in Louisville.
Di worked at UPS, Humana and other companies in Louisville all the while expanding the family business. Ultimately, with his mother, he started the Louisville Beauty Academy and since its opening in 2016, have trained more than 260 people in cosmetology, nail technology, aesthetic.
Today, Di Tran runs Di Tran Enterprises, LLC which owns and operates licensed private post-secondary schools, as well as a variety of small businesses in the greater Louisville metropolitan area.
Additionally, Di serves as the President and Chief Academic Officer for the Louisville Institute of Technology, a post-secondary education institution he founded with the mission to prepare students and apprentices through intense, immersive practical training so that they may qualify for and attain employment in high-demand information technology technical fields and professions.
Di’s life story demonstrates the power of working hard to achieve goals, which is something JFCS Career Services clients do every day. Like Di, our clients rely on their own talents and strengths, receiving support from our career counselors along the way, to make and achieve their goals.
