The quietest leader in the room

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The quietest leader in the room

RMIT Vietnam’s Class representative Nguyen Thuy Anh Thu has never set out to stand at the front. She set out to open doors and ended up doing both.

There is a certain kind of person who does not announce their presence, they simply begin doing what needs to be done. They show up early, stay late, and somewhere along the way, the room quietly reorganises itself around them. Nguyen Thuy Anh Thu, a fresh graduate from the Bachelor of Languages program at RMIT Vietnam, is precisely that kind of person. As the 2026 Class Representative in Saigon South campus for the School of Communication & Design, her story is less about a résumé and more about a philosophy: your success only counts when it becomes someone else's doorway.

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Nguyen Thuy Anh Thu, 2026 RMIT Vietnam Class Representative for the School of Communication & Design at Saigon South campus

A slow bloom, a steady fire

Thu grew up watching her parents weigh every opportunity twice before taking it. That careful relationship with possibility left a mark, not of caution, but of conviction. She arrived at RMIT as, in her own words, "the quieter sibling, the slower bloom". She did not feel like someone destined to lead.

Then she started translating.

Choosing language as her major, Thu discovered not just a discipline but a method – a way of connecting people to opportunities they might otherwise never reach. Through the Bachelor of Languages program, Thu founded Lexisprouts, a student-led translation team that grew to over 30 members and delivered six published books in partnership with Trẻ Publishing House. She recruited and mentored junior students, ran quality checks and coordinated eight teams simultaneously. She once visited every single team meeting in a single day to make sure no one felt forgotten because she knew what it felt like to be new and unsure.

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Thu and Lexisprouts, a student-led translation team she founded.

"I named our group Lexisprouts when we began our first book translation project. It symbolises passionate, budding translators growing in their craft," Thu said.

Dr Le Xuan Quynh, Program Manager of the Bachelor of Languages program, described her as embodying "excellence, initiative and service-oriented leadership". Associate Professor Catherine Earl from the Professional Communication program recalled watching her recruit and coordinate a team of ten simultaneous interpreters for a research workshop on age-friendly smart cities, handling unexpected disruptions on the day with such composure that external partners publicly acknowledged her by name.

Beyond the campus walls

What distinguishes Thu is not simply the list of things she has done, but the thread running through all of it – that education and skill only matter when they circulate beyond the self. Professional translation projects with Trẻ Publishing House became learning platforms as she recruited and mentored students through Lexisprouts. Interpreting roles, including the Age-Friendly Smart Cities research workshop, RMIT Experience Day, and cross-faculty academic events, turned into shared experiences, shaped by the student teams she assembled and led. Even opportunities beyond campus, such as the translation work with the Hong Kong Tourism Board, were passed forward to students still searching for a place to begin.

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(Left) Thu was interpreting at RMIT Experience Day in 2025. (Right) Thu and her team showcased their translated book ‘Eyes on Impact’ at the School of Communication & Design Exhibition Day in 2025.

Even beyond the campus, that belief remained consistent. At Thảo Đàn Social Service Center, she spent months guiding workshops for underserved children, providing simultaneous interpretation and logistical support. She approached the work with the same care she brought to academic projects, convinced that language, when used with intention, could become a bridge for those too often left unseen. In each setting, her quiet question was the same: “Who else could benefit from this doorway if I held it open a little longer?”.

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Thu (right) led workshops for underserved children, providing simultaneous interpretation and logistical support at Thảo Đàn Social Service Center.

At the ECO Vietnam Group's cross-cultural Learning Beyond Borders project, she did not simply interpret for Vietnamese students and their Singaporean counterparts. She noticed when students hesitated, gently helped them find their words, and watched as the quieter ones gradually began to speak up. Her supervisor said that her presence made the space less intimidating.

TV host and motivational speaker Ms Amy Minh Hạnh Corey, one of the twenty people who endorsed Thu's application for the Class Representative award, put it simply: "She leads with her own voice while welcoming, spotlighting and uplifting the voices of others. That is a rare quality". A rare quality, and perhaps exactly what a graduating class needs in the person who will speak for them, not someone who shouts, but someone who listens first, then makes sure every voice in the room has been heard.

After the applause

Graduation does not feel like an ending for Thu so much as a shift in scale. She is currently working with Better Me English, where she is part of a project coaching English and interview‑related soft skills for the team at AIESEC, an international youth-run and led, non-governmental and not-for-profit organisation. The work is practical and people-facing, centred on confidence, preparation, and helping young learners articulate what they are capable of, the same concerns that shaped her leadership at university.

Lexisprouts will remain active within the Bachelor of Languages program, now led by the junior translators she mentored over the past three years. She has already handed over project management responsibilities and established a knowledge-sharing framework so that incoming students can step into real publishing work from their first semester.

"I want the team to outlast any single person," she said. "The whole point was never about me; it was about building something that keeps opening doors after I'm gone."

Story: Ha Hoang

Communication and design

Campus and community

23 April 2026

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