Helen Tran is an American politician and the mayor of

San Bernardino, California San Bernardino (; Spanish for "Saint Bernardino") is a city and county seat of San Bernardino County, California, United States. Located in the Inland Empire region of Southern California, the city had a population of 222,101 in the 2020 cen ...

. Tran was elected in the 2022 San Bernardino mayoral election and is the city's first Asian American mayor.

Early life and education

Tran was born to

Vietnamese Vietnamese may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to Vietnam, a country in Southeast Asia ** A citizen of Vietnam. See Demographics of Vietnam. * Vietnamese people, or Kinh people, a Southeast Asian ethnic group native to Vietnam ** Overse ...

refugees in

San Diego San Diego ( , ; ) is a city on the Pacific Ocean coast of Southern California located immediately adjacent to the Mexico–United States border. With a 2020 population of 1,386,932, it is the List of United States cities by population, eigh ...

. She attended

Cajon High School Cajon High School is located in the University District of San Bernardino, California, and is part of the San Bernardino City Unified School District. Academics Cajon High School is part of the International Baccalaureate Organization (IB) incl ...

and became the first in her family to earn a college degree when she graduated from

University of California, Santa Cruz The University of California, Santa Cruz (UC Santa Cruz or UCSC) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Santa Cruz, California. It is one of the ten campuses in the University of California syste ...

with a Bachelors Degree in

American studies American studies or American civilization is an interdisciplinary field of scholarship that examines American literature, history, society, and culture. It traditionally incorporates literary criticism, historiography and critical theory. Sch ...

in 2004.

Career

Tran worked for the City of San Bernardino for nearly fourteen years within

human resources Human resources (HR) is the set of people who make up the workforce of an organization, business sector, industry, or economy. A narrower concept is human capital, the knowledge and skills which the individuals command. Similar terms include m ...

and served as the Director of that department for four years. In 2019 she worked for the City of

West Covina West or Occident is one of the four cardinal directions or points of the compass. It is the opposite direction from east and is the direction in which the Sun sets on the Earth. Etymology The word "west" is a Germanic word passed into some R ...

as the Director of Human Resources and Risk Management. She has stated that she will resign from this role once her term in office begins.

References

Living people 21st-century American politicians 21st-century American women politicians American mayors of Asian descent California politicians of Vietnamese descent American women of Vietnamese descent in politics Mayors of San Bernardino, California Year of birth missing (living people) {{California-politician-stub