At this year’s Exemplary Leadership Celebration, on April 18, American Leadership Forum Silicon Valley will present ALF Senior Fellow Minh Le (ALF Class XIV) with the 2024 John W. Gardner Award. This award is presented annually to two Senior Fellows in recognition of their efforts to bridge divides and their commitment to uphold ALF’s core values of diversity, inclusiveness, engagement, and respect.
Please join us in congratulating Mr. Le on this well-deserved recognition. And be sure to join us on April 18 for the 2024 Exemplary Leadership Celebration gala!
About Minh Le
Minh’s journey is a testament to resilience and dedication. Growing up during the Vietnam War in a large family struggling with constant challenges, Minh’s major opportunity showed up at 17 when he received a scholarship to become an exchange student in Waseca, Minnesota. In this role as a cultural ambassador, he became accomplished in sharing the richness of his homeland’s language, music, customs, and traditions and was received with affection and friendship by the people and communities he encountered.
Their generosity and guidance led Minh to a scholarship at Gustavus Adolphus College in St. Peter, Minnesota, where he majored in Chemistry and Psychology. Life took a dramatic turn in 1975 when his country fell to Communist forces, resulting in a painful separation of his parents and siblings during the exodus from Vietnam. It would take 17 years before their family was reunited.
Following college graduation, Minh spent two decades working in sales, systems engineering, marketing, and business program management for high-tech companies like IBM, StorageTek, and National Advanced Systems. In 1989, while in Sydney, Australia, as VP of Marketing for Hitachi Data Systems (HDS) in the Asia Pacific region, Minh underwent transformative leadership training and mentoring by Wilf Jarvis, a psychologist who was widely recognized as an elder statesman of Australian behavior science.
He embraced Jarvis’ system of leadership and organizational development, known as Four Quadrant Leadership (4QL), and became a trainer and mentor for other managers and executives in all of the countries where HDS did business. During this time, Minh was offered an opportunity to transition from doing Marketing work to serving as VP of Leadership Programs for Hitachi Data Systems. For 4 years he would be HDS’ internal leadership trainer and culture change agent. In 1998, with Jarvis’ backing and support, Minh founded the Wilfred Jarvis Institute to focus on leadership and organizational effectiveness work. After Jarvis passed away in 2021, Minh became one of a small team of educators who would “stand on the shoulder of the giant” to do his legacy work.
Minh’s commitment to dialogue and bridge-building has played a pivotal role in his consulting practice. He has facilitated, mediated, and moderated discussions for diverse communities and organizations facing complex challenges. From families to neighborhoods, airport construction projects to school districts, community colleges, city and county governments, an open space district, a water agency, a land trust founded by a Native American tribe, start-up companies, non-profit entities, and within the American Leadership Forum network of leaders, Minh’s application of principled relationships and techniques has promoted conflict resolution, collaboration, and trust-building.
In addition to his professional endeavors, Minh has been a devoted servant leader in his community and a persistent advocate for ALF’s core values of diversity, inclusiveness, civility, engagement, and respect. In his life, he consistently emphasizes the importance of unity and collaboration, encapsulated in the proverb, “If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.”
Minh resides in Cupertino with his wife, Anhthu, and they have been married for 38 years. They have two adult children, Quinn Anh Le, and Brian Dang-Khoa Le. Minh has been a proud member of the Vietnamese American community in Northern California for 40 years and a faithful citizen of the United States for 43 years.
About John W. Gardner
ALF’s John W. Gardner Award is named in honor of John W. Gardner (1912 – 2002), former Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare, and author of On Leadership (1990). Gardner helped design the national ALF organization and helped develop the Silicon Valley chapter.
