Where legacy meets what’s next: Nguyen Thi Khanh Linh on taking her family business further

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Where legacy meets what’s next: Nguyen Thi Khanh Linh on taking her family business further

Nguyen Thi Khanh Linh returned to RMIT with a clear goal – to build the knowledge and perspective needed to take her family business further in a changing world.

For Nguyen Thi Khanh Linh, continuing her family’s jewellery business was never the question – understanding how far it could go, and what she needed to learn to take it there, was.

She grew up surrounded by the rhythms of a business shaped over generations. Gold jewellery was not just a product – it was a legacy, built by her grandparents and parents through years of craftsmanship and trust. But stepping into that world, Linh found herself asking something different: how could it go beyond traditional retail to create new value and reach new markets?

Her first answer came through design. As an undergraduate at RMIT, she explored how technology and creative thinking could add value – in the form of product innovation and manufacturing. But as her ideas took shape, another question surfaced: once you create something new, how do you bring it to market?

That question led her back to RMIT for an MBA.

Through it, she began to understand business not as a series of decisions, but as a system. She often describes it as a vessel moving through open water – the larger it becomes, the greater the waves it must face. The MBA helped her understand how each “gear” works together to keep that vessel steady, even in unpredictable conditions.

But even with that clarity, her ambition began to shift. It was no longer just about running the business within its current boundaries – it was about how far it could go beyond them.

If the business was to move beyond familiar waters, she would need to understand how it moves across markets, cultures and borders. And so, she continued with the Master of International Business, stepping into a space that had, until then, been largely uncharted to her.

It was here that her thinking began to shift more deeply. As she began to understand how businesses operate across markets, she also saw their wider impact. She came to realise that business is not only about growth or profit, but about the value it creates beyond itself. Sustainability became a way for her to evaluate decisions, balancing opportunity with responsibility.

That way of thinking was shaped through her experience at RMIT. As part of the Global Entrepreneurship course, she explored how to bring Tây Ninh rice paper into the Australian market. Working with industry partners, she identified two key challenges: product breakage and packaging waste, and proposed a more sustainable packaging approach.

Today, the project has moved beyond the classroom and into pilot implementation – and for Linh, it represents more than a successful assignment. It offered a working model of how the same thinking could be applied to her family business, from product to distribution.

For Linh, each stage of learning – from her family’s shared knowledge to her experience at RMIT – is about closing the gap between where she is and where she wants to go, so she can take the business further in a way that balances growth with long-term sustainability.

I study because there are still things I have yet to discover

– a mindset that carried through to her graduating with Distinction and receiving the Program Excellence Award 2026 in the Master of International Business.

And in a world that is constantly shifting, that clarity is what prepares her for what’s next.

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21 April 2026

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Where legacy meets what’s next: Nguyen Thi Khanh Linh on taking her family business further