Betty Duong
Supervisor • District 2
Term expires: 2029-01-08
Betty Duong is one of Silicon Valley's most historic and deeply personal public servants — a daughter of Vietnamese refugees who was literally raised by the county she now leads, and who has broken barriers as the first Vietnamese American and first Asian American woman ever elected to the Santa Clara County Board of Supervisors. Elected in November 2024, she represents more than 400,000 residents of San José in the Downtown, East Side, Southside and surrounding neighborhoods — a district that is also home to the historic communities of Japantown, Little Saigon, Little Italy, Mayfair, and Little Portugal.
The proud daughter of immigrants, Duong's family arrived in San José after the Vietnam War. As clients of the County's Refugee Resettlement Program, the family lived in downtown San José Section 8 housing before moving to the Eastside to rebuild their lives and create new roots in America. She was born at the county hospital itself, and as a child served as the family's unofficial translator, helping her parents, sisters, and neighbors navigate government agencies, social services, and daily life in America — an experience that instilled in her both a deep fluency in how government works and a fierce commitment to making it work for everyone.
Duong earned an associate degree from De Anza College in 2003, a bachelor's degree from the University of California, Berkeley in 2005 — where she studied Asian American Studies and was profoundly shaped by the diversity of perspectives she encountered — and a Juris Doctorate from the University of California, Davis King Hall School of Law. Throughout law school, she clerked at the Santa Clara County Public Defender's Office, learning firsthand the importance of helping those in need with behavioral health services, employment opportunities, and housing before they become part of the criminal justice system. As an attorney, she practiced employment law, serving as special counsel to the Vietnamese American Workers' Rights Project with Legal Aid at Work and as supervising attorney with the Katharine and George Alexander Law Center Workers' Rights Clinic.
Prior to her election, Duong spent more than a decade working in multiple capacities for the County of Santa Clara, including serving as the original manager of both the Office of Labor Standards Enforcement and the Vietnamese American Service Center, as well as guiding the creation of the County's language access policy and Language Access Unit. During the COVID-19 pandemic, she served as one of the County's lead public information officers. She most recently served as chief of staff for District 2 Supervisor Cindy Chavez, whose seat she went on to win — giving her an unusually seamless transition into office.
Among her most consequential pre-election accomplishments: in 2016, Duong took a leave of absence from the County to manage the successful Measure A campaign, which secured passage of a $950 million bond issue dedicated to affordable housing. In the eight years since Measure A passed, the bond funds have been used to help finance approximately 5,000 units of affordable housing in 10 cities throughout Santa Clara County, representing the majority of affordable housing construction in the county during the last decade.
Duong was sworn into office on the 50th anniversary of the Fall of Saigon — a date of enormous emotional resonance for the Vietnamese-American community she now represents at the highest level of county government. "Santa Clara County is the second largest population of Vietnamese Americans outside of Vietnam," she has noted, making her historic election a milestone felt far beyond San José. In office, her priorities center on affordable housing, accessible county services, homelessness, and economic opportunity for working families. She and her husband Khai live in downtown San José and are raising their two children in the district.
