Intel's Vietnam Engineering Talent Pipeline

Cuc Duong is used to being the only female engineer in the room. In 2012 the 24-year-old Vietnam native was the sole woman to complete her electronics and telecommunications engineering program at Da Nang University of Technology, alongside 23 men. But as she finished a two-year program at Portland State University in June, Duong was in the unusual position of having lots of female peers. She was one of 16 women and 5 men in this year’s class of Vietnamese students at the Oregon school, the final class of a three-part program sponsored by Intel. If more Vietnamese women consider careers in engineering, she says, “I think there will be rapid change in the near future.”

Duong and her classmates are returning to Vietnam, where Intel opened a $1 billion plant in 2010. The facility is Intel’s largest for testing and assembling chips, and the company says its 1,000-employee staff will triple in the next few years. To staff up in a market where engineers are suddenly in hot demand, the chipmaker is turning to women, who, while a big part of Vietnam’s workforce, are underrepresented among the nation’s engineers.