Channapha Khamvongsa

Channapha Khamvongsa (born 1973) is the Lao-American founder and executive director of Legacies of War, a D.C.-based non-profit, non-partisan organization dedicated to raising awareness about the history and continued effects of the Vietnam War-era bombings in Laos through the use of art, culture, education, and advocacy. In September 2016, President Barack Obama acknowledged Channapha’s advocacy efforts in Laos, when he became the first U.S. President to visit the country.

Khamvongsa was born in the Laotian capital of Vientiane. However, as a result of the Laotian Civil War, in 1979, six-year-old Khamvongsa and her family were forced to flee due to political and economic uncertainty.

A boat took her family of eight across the Mekong River in pairs, with Khamvongsa and her father waiting until her mother contacted them to confirm that they successfully crossed the border into Thailand. When they did not hear from her mother, Khamvongsa's father decided to have a stranger smuggle Khamvongsa across the border alone. Khamvongsa later found the rest of her family in a refugee camp.

Fearing detection by the Thai border patrol, her father attempted to swim across the river. Despite crossing the river, the Thai border patrol detained him and placed him in a holding cell. By chance, a family friend recognized him as he was crossing the river and sent word to Khamvongsa's family of his situation. The friend also knew a supervisor from the refugee camp and after sending someone with money to pay for his release, the eight of them were reunited.

In 1980, after a year in the refugee camp, Khamvongsa and her family left for Falls Creek, Virginia. As a child, Khamvongsa knew very little about the Secret War in Laos. For her parents' generation, the trauma they had endured led many to ignore or simply forget their past experiences. Through her own research later in life, Khamvongsa was able to discover her homeland's violent past and how this past was affecting the present.

Khamvongsa received her Bachelor's of Science Degree in Public Administration from George Mason University in 2000. In 2002 she received a master's degree in Public Policy from Georgetown University.

Before founding Legacies of War, Khamvongsa worked at the Ford Foundation in the Peace and Social Justice Unit, the Center for Public and Nonprofit Leadership at Georgetown University, the Southeast Asia Resource Action Center, the Bill and Melinda Gates Millennium Scholars Program, the National Asian Pacific Center on Aging, and at NEO Philanthropy.

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