Thao Griffiths

Biography

Thao Griffiths has worked to strengthen U.S.-Vietnam relations for over 20 years, with personal commendations from former U.S. President Bill Clinton, Senator Patrick Leahy and Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

Based in Singapore, she leads Meta’s public policy work across Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar and Vietnam, focused on AI, data, privacy, safety and free expression online. AI is the heart of her portfolio. Thao is one of three founding architects of Project ViGen, a partnership between Meta, Vietnam’s National Innovation Center and the AI for Vietnam Foundation, which builds large-scale, open-source Vietnamese datasets and evaluation frameworks so AI models genuinely understand Vietnamese language, culture and context. Since its 2025 launch, ViGen has released the largest open Vietnamese pre-training dataset, and five model assessment frameworks, with resources transferred to Vietnamese authorities. In 2026, Thao received the Tech Diplomacy Award for Asia-Pacific for this work.

She’s a Commissioner of the International Commission on Missing Persons in The Hague, and since 2024 sits on the Board of Trustees of France’s VII Foundation, which works to transform visual journalism.

A graduate of the Academy of Diplomacy of Vietnam, Thao holds Master’s degrees from RMIT in systems engineering and American University in international relations. A Fulbright Scholar and Eisenhower Fellow, she received the 2024 Distinguished Eisenhower Fellow Award from former US Secretary of Defense Dr Robert Gates.

In 2023, President Pro Tempore of the US Senate, Senator Patrick Leahy entered a “Tribute to Thao Griffiths” into the Congressional Record: “none of the war legacy initiatives that have played such a central role in building a comprehensive partnership between the U.S. and Vietnam would have progressed as they have without Thao’s constant encouragement and thoughtful advice.”

Her work has featured on CNN, BBC, PBS, the New York Times and Al Jazeera