Pham Foundation builds scholarship programs through institutions our family knows, understands, and is prepared to support with long-term commitment.
San José State University, Trần Quốc Tuấn High School, and UC Berkeley are not chosen at random. Scott graduated from SJSU's College of Engineering. Tammy attended Trần Quốc Tuấn and later earned her Bachelor of Science in Chemical Engineering at UC Berkeley. These are the schools that shaped our family — and the first places we chose to give back.
Established in March 2026, this scholarship supports a promising engineering student selected through SJSU's internal scholarship process.
A five-year program recognizing academic excellence, perseverance, and distinguished teaching at Trần Quốc Tuấn High School.
Planned for 2027, this scholarship mirrors the SJSU model and reflects Tammy T. Duong's connection to UC Berkeley.
Pham Foundation is a private family foundation. Each year, it funds scholarships at the schools where our family has a personal connection. Behind each scholarship is an endowment — a $100,000 block of Foundation assets set aside permanently, invested to generate the annual award without further giving. When an endowment is fully funded, the scholarship it supports runs indefinitely. The model then moves to the next school. This is how a family's assets become something that outlasts them.
Give from a structure, not from impulse. The Foundation is designed to make commitments that can be honored across generations. To do this, we first protect an operating reserve for administration, compliance, accounting, legal needs, technology, and program management. The remaining assets are then organized into dedicated internal endowment funds. Each $100,000 block is pledged to a defined mission, invested with care, and used to support annual grants from the Foundation's long-term financial capacity. This allows programs such as the SJSU scholarship, the Trần Quốc Tuấn scholarship, science education grants, the planned UC Berkeley scholarship, and future commitments to continue in perpetuity. The goal is simple: every promise should have a financial foundation beneath it.
This chart shows the Foundation's current internal planning model. It is not a separate legal fund structure; it is a stewardship discipline for assigning purpose to the assets already held by the Foundation.