Romeo Nguyen
My name is Romeo Nguyen, and I’m a 31 year old Vietnamese Black trans man, first-generation college student, and future hospice and palliative care nurse at Edmonds College. I applied for the Martin Achievement Scholarship because I wanted to be part of a space rooted in leadership and social change. I hope being part of the Martin Scholar program helps me continue growing as both a nurse and advocate for marginalized people.
I returned to school at 30 carrying years of experiences shaped by poverty, grief, violence, precarity, and survival. Those experiences taught me early that individuals and systems are interconnected and not divorced from each other. Poverty, discrimination, and violence shape the way people move through the world and experience healthcare.
Alongside school, I founded Communal Touch, a trans and Black-led nonprofit rooted in harm reduction, crisis support, and collective care for marginalized communities. I want to continue creating support for people impacted by incarceration, criminalization, poverty, and state violence.
My interest in hospice and palliative care comes from witnessing death, violence, and grief up close throughout my life, as well as from my experience providing hospice massage and emotional support to patients and families. That work taught me that sometimes there is nothing left to do medically, but there is still a lot of care left to give.
Curiosity has become one of the main frameworks guiding my life and work. It allows me to remain open to people, complexity, contradiction, and the possibility of reimagining a different world even after hardship. I believe community care is self care, and that people are not meant to survive grief, hardship, or vulnerability alone. Tenderness, curiosity, and the belief that people deserve dignity regardless of circumstance continue to guide both my work and future in nursing.
Goals
My near-term goal is to finish nursing school while continuing to grow Communal Touch and my work in hospice and palliative care. Long-term, I hope to mentor other trans people entering healthcare and continue building care rooted in safety, harm reduction, and community.
Tips
You are never too old to begin again. Returning to school later in life does not mean you failed or fell behind. Sometimes it means you arrived carrying wisdom, grief, responsibility, and life experience that cannot be taught in a classroom. Take everything you have survived, witnessed, questioned, or carried and ask yourself what meaning you want to make from it. If you choose to write about hardship, also talk about how it transformed the way you move through the world.
Curiosity can be your compass. When you feel discouraged or overwhelmed, ask yourself: what can this teach me? What beauty or possibility still exists here? I think staying curious leaves room for growth, empathy, awe, and the ability to reimagine your future even after hardship.
