大象传媒

Thuan Pham, now the chief technology officer at Uber in San Francisco, fled the Vietnam war in 1979 when he was 10-years-old.

Speaking to Ritula Shah for The World Tonight, he describes how he left his home in the middle of the night, crammed into a boat with hundreds of other refugees. They nearly sank, were robbed by pirates and then dumped on a deserted island where they had to build shacks to live in.

He was eventually processed as a refugee and came to live in the US. "The experience did not scar me," he says. "If you live in a place where there is freedom and opportunity, you can make it."

(Photo: Thuan Pham, chief technology officer at Uber, San Francisco. Credit: 大象传媒)