Phung was ten years old when her family moved from Vietnam to the United States. She did not speak a word of English. The struggle left a mark she would carry into adulthood, until something finally helped her put it down for good. “It was really a damper on my self-esteem,” she shared. Over the years, she did the work. She learned English, built a life, and launched a career as a Human Resources Coordinator. She stayed with the same employer for more than a decade, earning promotions along the way. Then in 2019, the company lost one of its largest clients and was forced to lay off its staff. Phung found herself unemployed for the first time in years. Six months passed. The silence of an empty inbox and the weight of unanswered applications began to compound into something heavier. “I had a lot of self-doubt,” she said. “The longer I was unemployed, the larger my doubts became.” During a visit to NCWorks, Phung crossed paths with a Dress for Success Triangle volunteer who told her about the Going Places Network, a weekly job acquisition program for women. She signed up without knowing what to expect. What she found inside that classroom changed everything.

“I found out that I was not the only one feeling the way I was about myself, but that there were twenty other women in the class who felt the same way,” she shared. “We all felt like we weren’t good enough.”

Phung and her classmates soon discovered the truth: they were good enough. They always had been. They just did not know what they needed to do to advertise themselves to employers. Through the Going Places Network, Phung attended five mock interviews with Triangle businesses, practicing her answers, working through her nerves, and learning to present herself with clarity and purpose. Hearing her classmates share their own stories helped her open up in ways she had not expected. “Being in a class of all women, you are all equal, and you don’t have to feel like you’re competing,” she said. Since graduating, Phung has enrolled in four continuing education courses to finish her degree. She is still searching for her next role while balancing her coursework, building the foundation she always wanted but never had the tools to construct. “The Going Places Network taught me that if I can do this class, I can do any class,” she shared. “The class gave me the courage to go back and do a restart on my career to build a solid foundation. I now have a clear view on what I need to do to achieve my long term goals.” Her goals, it turns out, were not big enough before. The program did not just help Phung find her next job. It helped her see that she had been underestimating herself all along.

“The class helped me to break the glass ceiling and to show me that what I was aiming for was not enough. Now I want more.”