Like a good cultural anthropologist, Dr. Amy Dao believes that it is critically important “to live in the communities that we are studying.”
In 2015 and 2016, Dao, an assistant professor of anthropology at California State Polytechnic University, Pomona (Cal Poly Pomona), spent time in Vietnam researching the country’s pivot to universal health coverage.
At the time, she was working on her dissertation, which she completed as a doctoral student at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health.
But her time in Vietnam was personal too. Dao’s parents fled the country after the Vietnam War in the 1970s. They met in San Jose, California, and Dao and her brother were born years later.
Growing up, there was always the expectation that Dao would attend college. She enrolled at the University of California, Riverside, where she was mentored by Dr. Juliet McMullin, a cultural and medical anthropologist, and had the opportunity to engage in research. That experience got Dao thinking seriously about graduate school.
“That’s when I started to realize that I really enjoy doing research and I love anthropology,” says Dao, who worked full-time for McMullin for three years before enrolling at Columbia and earning a Ph.D. in 2018. She has been on the faculty at Cal Poly Pomona for the past four years.
“I realized I could turn whatever curiosity I have about anything into a potential career,” says Dao.
