Duy-Loan Le

First woman named Texas Instruments Senior Fellow

• Born: July 17, 1962
• Place of Birth: Saigon, Vietnam

Primary Company/Organization: Texas Instruments

Introduction

Duy-Loan Le came to the United States as a teenager with limited English proficiency. She worked hard and graduated as her high school valedictorian at age sixteen, graduating from the University of Texas at nineteen. As an engineer at Texas Instruments, she rose through the ranks to become a manager of wireless communications projects and the first Asian American and first woman to be elected a Senior Fellow at that company. She is also known for her dedication to family, community service, and philanthropy.

Early Life

In 1975, Duy-Loan T. Le came to the United States without her father but with a nine-member family; she is the seventh child in a family of six daughters and three sons. Her father is Thanh Thien Le and her mother, Huong Thi Tang.

Vietnam in the 1970s had only a single engineering school, and her father wanted her to be an engineer. Her father valued education for girls and boys alike, and she graduated second from Nguyen Binh Khiem elementary school in 1973. First in her family to enter junior high school, she seemed headed for an exceptional career.

Then South Vietnam fell to North Vietnam in 1975. Because a sister had married and left for the United States in 1972, Le's mother and eight other siblings left for Houston, Texas, with less than $100—but by luckily airplane rather than among the “boat people.” They left Vietnam on April 22, 1975, when Le was only twelve years old; her father and eldest brother stayed behind. The country collapsed, surrendering to North Vietnam, eight days later. Remaining in Vietnam for four years after the family left, Le's father attempted to save some of the family's assets but failed, and he finally walked out through Thailand, whence the family brought him to the United States.

In Houston, Le was sent back to the sixth grade (in Vietnam she would have been in the eighth grade) because of the language barrier. Initially, she struggled with all but mathematics and art. Baseball helped her to get along with classmates, and her painting drew the attention of the school principal. To overcome the setback, Le worked hard to learn English, carrying a dictionary with her and studying it every day; with help from the school principal and her teachers, she succeeded in getting moved to junior high school, where she belonged, then entering Alief Hastings High School. She cooked for the family, cleaned, worked in a restaurant in the evenings between 5:00 P.M. and 2:00 A.M., and still managed to finish in 1979 as a sixteen-year-old valedictorian in a class of 335 students.

At the University of Texas at Austin, Le took between nineteen and twenty-one hours of course work per semester, in a hurry to get done because she was breaching tradition that said a woman did not leave home until she married. She earned a bachelor of science degree in electrical engineering in 1982, magna cum laude, and her master's degree in business administration while she was working full time. With the income she earned, she bought her parents a house and then bought one of her own. She also became engaged. In 1981, Le was feature in a Houston Chronicle article as a “scholastic wonder,” and she also received a commendation from the Netherlands' ambassador for her scholastic performance and fund raising on behalf of Vietnamese refugees.

Life's Work

In 1982, at age nineteen, Le began working at Texas Instruments as a memory design engineer. Between 1985 and 1989, she worked as a liaison between the Texas design team and a Japanese engineering team. The Japanese were accustomed to women serving tea and cleaning the restrooms, not engineering. They got over it and professional respect built a relationship that spanned decades. In 1989, Le became design manager and in 1994 a program manager. Her worldwide projects involved the multibillion-dollar Texas Instruments memory device line in joint ventures with partners on three continents.

In 1998, TI decided to sell the memory division, and Le decided to look for a new job rather than move to the new company. She interviewed with Compaq, but Texas Instruments wanted to keep her, so it put her into digital signal processing; in 2000, she became Digital Signal Processor Advanced Technology Ramp Manager. Texas Instruments also made her a TI Fellow along with another woman, one of the originators of the digital signal processing group. In 2002, Le was elected Senior Fellow: the first Asian American and the first woman to achieve that honor at Texas Instruments; only four other people, all men, held the title.

Also in 2002, Le founded the Sunflower Mission, an educational nonprofit, and became the first woman on the National Instruments Corporation board of directors. She also joined the board of eSilicon Corporation, a semiconductor design firm.

Le holds more than two dozen patents. Aside from her patents, she developed a six-month technical training program in use in seven plants in five countries. She was one of the Top 20 Houston Women in Technology in 2000. Her work as advanced technology ramp manager involves digital signal processors, including one that holds a 2004 Guinness record as the fastest single-core digital signal processor in the world. She has been inducted into the Women in Technology International Hall of Fame, has been named a Women of Color National Technologist of the Year and Asian American Engineer of the Year, and is a recipient of the Vietnamese American Golden Torch and the Anita Borg Institute's Women of Vision leadership award. Le retired from Texas Instruments in 2017.

Personal Life

Le married Tuan N. Dao on December 18, 1982, in a Vietnamese traditional wedding. Her husband graduated from the University of Texas the year she started. He is about seven years older, from a family of a dozen children, and a 1975 immigrant from Vietnam. Dao is a senior executive consultant with an oil and gas delivery systems project management company. They decided to wait a decade before having children, allowing time for career development. They then had their first son, Dan Quy-Le Dao, on August 30, 1993. Their second son, Don Quy-Le Dao, was born February 22, 1997.

Le has worked at Texas Instruments on behalf of career advancement for women and minorities, including but not restricted to Vietnamese Americans. In the community, she participates in United Way, Junior Achievement, and fund raising for orphanages, colleges, and foundations, particularly those focused on educating Third World children with an emphasis on Asian Pacific Islanders. She was cofounder of the Science National Honor Society, whose purpose is to promote and improve education in mathematics and science at the high school level.

Le is a founding member and her husband is chair of the Sunflower Mission, a 501(c)3 organization providing educational assistance to Vietnamese. As of 2024, she also serves as director of the Mona Foundation, which works toward education and gender equality to end poverty, conflict, and disease.

Le holds a black belt in taekwondo and has won state-level medals and trophies. She enjoys travel, has spent extensive time overseas, and relaxes through deep-sea fishing, classical music, painting, watching movies, reading, or playing poker. She is also a motivational speaker.

Bibliography

Castaneda, Katiana. “Faces in the Crowd: Duy-Loan Le.” Houston Chronicle 21 Apr. 2005. Print.

“Duy-Loan Le.” LinkedIn. www.linkedin.com/in/duy-loan-le-2922ba8a. Accessed 5 Mar. 2024.

“Duy-Loan Le, Senior Fellow, Texas Instruments.” 2001. Women in Technology International Hall of Fame. Web. 12 May 2012.

Oltersdorf, Cora. “Saigon to Silicon: Duy-Loan Le, BS ‘82, Is Technologist of the Year.” The Alcalde Nov. 2002. Web. Google Books. 12 May 2012.

Ongaro, Laura. “Successful Professional Puts Focus on Her Family.” Houston Chronicle 29 Nov. 2001. Print.

Pham, Khoi. "Meet Le Duy Loan, the First and Only Female Senior Fellow at Texas Instruments in 87 Years." Saigoneer, 18 Nov. 2017, saigoneer.com/society/society-categories/11829-meet-le-duy-loan,-the-first-and-only-female-senior-fellow-at-texas-instruments-in-87-years. Accessed 5 Mar. 2024.