B I O

COSTANZIA  TRAN  ―  adviser • strategist • exec • entrepreneur 

synopsis

Costanzia Tran is an independent adviser, political strategist, corporate executive, and former creative & media entrepreneur.  She debuted as a GOP strategist in the Reagan era.  She became top adviser to the owner of a California-based realty firm and worked her way up to a senior executive position before transitioning from a corporate career into entrepreneurship.  She was the founder & chief strategist of COSTANZIA CORPORATION based in Delaware; owner & chief creative of EQUILIO WEB DESIGN; and owner & founding editor of EQUILIO MEDIA.  Headhunted by the London-based Reuters, she served as an expert for Reuters Insight, a British expert network firm with international reach.  Costanzia has worn many hats.  Currently she is an independent adviser and strategy consultant to high-level decision makers, organisations and businesses at the international level.

Along her business and advisory careers, she has been promoting freedom of religion for Tibetan monks.

EARLY  LIFE

Costanzia Tran (also Costanzia Kim-Anh Tran) was born in Saigon, South Vietnam, into the family of upper academia and Saigon's political elites.

BUSINESS  &  ADVISORY  CAREERS

Costanzia went on her first Europe trip alone as an adult, in 1985, to Brussels from California.  She soon moved to Paris, where she was trained as creative assistant at various agences de publicité (French advertising agencies), frequently acted as an interpreter to translate, from French into English, the creative vision envisaged by the agency's creative head to their international clients.  The Cold War tensions still could be felt in full force across the physical divide between West and East Europe.  Her West Berlin trip in June 1987 had shaped her political development as she accidentally watched President Ronald Reagan delivering his speech "Mr Gorbachev, tear down this wall" at the iconic Brandenburg Gate.

In its heyday, from the 1980s to early 1990s, Hong Kong was put on the world map as its classic martial arts films achieved cult status in the West.  Fascinated by the Golden Age of Hong Kong cinema, at one point in the 80s, she decided to take a chance and further hone her skills as a creative in the city's thriving entertainment sector, travelling to what was then British Hong Kong.

By June 1988 Costanzia returned to California from Paris.  She was recommended by a friend, who could see the potential in her that she could not see, to work as a political strategist for the Orange County Republican Central Committee.  As lead consultant, she was in charge of setting strategic objectives for the 1988 and 1990 election campaigns, including developing overall strategy, operating a phone bank, managing field operations and creating adverts to help elect conservative candidates.  She was credited with delivering 2 consecutive election victories for the Orange County's Republican tickets at both state and federal levels.

In 1991, she changed path to the corporate world as the Reagan era wound down.  She debuted as top adviser to the owner of Union Capital Investments Inc, a California corporation known for its property financing and brokerage in the hospitality sector.  Soon after, she accepted the vacant position of designated broker-officer (corporate executive) at the behest of the owner and stayed with the firm till 1999 throughout the nationwide collapse of the commercial property sector.  It was the decade when she had it all, lost it, and then regained her footing in the realm of entrepreneurship.

FAMILY

Costanzia's mother, Đan Thị Vy, was a French-educated operating room nurse.  Her highly regarded father, renowned Professeur agrégé Trần Ngọc Ninh, was a prominent nationalist politician in the Vietnam War and world-class surgeon known as the "father of orthopaedic surgery and paediatric surgery" in Vietnam.  He successfully performed Vietnam's first-ever separation surgery of conjoined twins (1977), which was regarded as an epic accomplishment given the medical constraint in post-war Vietnam.