Bonnie Baha Memorial Scholarship Awarded to Vietnam-born USC Grad Student Ha Hoang

The Pasadena Community Foundation announced that Ha Hoang, a second-year MBA student at USC Marshall School of Business, has been selected as the 2022 recipient of the Foundation’s Bonnie Baha Scholarship Program. 

Thanks to this scholarship, Hoang is set to receive $11,000 towards her MBA tuition.

The Bonnie Baha Memorial Scholarship was created in 2018 by the Baha family. Bonnie was tragically killed Aug. 21, 2016 when she and her members of her family were struck by a car while dropping off her son at the University of Virginia for his first year of college. Her husband and daughter escaped with non-life threatening injuries.

Baha was head of Global Developed Credit at DoubleLine Capital LP and regarded at the time as one of the top corporate credit analysts in the United States, according to Zero Hedge, a well-known financial website. The family resaided in San Marino.

This year’s awardee Hoang was born in Vietnam and obtained a BA in International Relations from Tufts University in 2018. 

“As someone born and raised in Vietnam, I would never have had the opportunity to attend college and later the MBA program in the U.S. without financial assistance,” Hoang said. “Baha’s scholarship grants me more time and space to enhance my skills, further my education, and increase career opportunities.” 

The is a component fund of the Pasadena Community Foundation (PCF). 

PCF oversees and manages the fund and the scholarship application process. The program is open to women students enrolled in the USC Marshall School of Business. The award goes to one recipient each year. 

“Ha Hoang was chosen because she fully demonstrates all of the scholarship criteria: she is an outstanding woman enrolled in a full-time Master’s Degree program with an interest in pursuing a career in business management,” Ai-Hsien “Allie” Carreón, Program Manager at the PCF, said. 

At USC, Hoang is a Forté Fellow and holds several leadership positions, including Vice President of Education at Marshall Finance Association, and Vice President of Treks at the Marshall Entrepreneurship and Venture Club. Ha has held several professional positions in the corporate finance and investment sectors, and is the co-founder of VietChallenge, a non-profit accelerator for Vietnamese startups based in Boston, Massachusetts. 

“Through this scholarship, Bonnie Baha’s legacy of helping women in finance will live on,” she said. “I am inspired by Baha’s career in finance and her work in building Doubleline into an established asset manager in the country. As a recipient of this scholarship, I look forward to paying it forward to help more aspiring women in finance.” 

Hoang plans to go full-time into banking after she completes her MBA studies at USC. She said she had developed a taste for banking after working in corporate finance, and decided to enroll in the full-time MBA program in order to cultivate her network. 

“I interviewed with a few groups before deciding Technology Coverage is my true interest,” Hoang said. “This summer, I am interning at Barclays in their Menlo Park office and intend to go back next year full-time. The internship offers hands-on experience and further reinforces my interest in technology banking.”

To know more about the Bonnie Baha Memorial Scholarship program, visit www.pasadenacf.org/funds/bonnie-baha-memorial-scholarship.