Pflugerville High School Alum Khue Tran Champions Advocacy and Justice on a National Stage

Khue Tran’s journey to advocacy began in East New Orleans, Louisiana, where she grew up in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. When a landfill was built on top of her neighborhood, she witnessed firsthand how discriminatory government policies could devastate entire communities. That experience planted the seed for what would become her lifelong commitment to fighting for marginalized people abandoned by local and federal systems.

After graduating from Pflugerville High School in 2018, Khue attended Yale College, where she earned degrees in Political Science and Ethnicity, Race, and Migration as a Yale Journalism Scholar. At Yale, she combined rigorous academics with hands-on community engagement—reporting from Flint, Michigan on city hall, policing, and religion, while also serving as a recruitment coordinator in Yale’s Office of Admissions. In that role, she helped students from underrepresented communities envision themselves at Yale and provided mentorship to make that dream attainable.

Following college, Khue joined Zealous, a nonprofit dedicated to challenging carceral injustice. There, she contributed to one of the most impactful projects of her career: a collaboration with Sarah Stillman of The New Yorker investigating wrongful convictions under felony murder laws. Over two years, Khue coordinated communication with incarcerated sources, managed data collection, oversaw coding and design, mentored law students, and fact-checked findings to ensure accuracy.

The project not only contributed to Stillman’s Pulitzer Prize–winning reporting but also led to the launch of the Felony Murder Reporting Project in December 2023—the first nationwide dataset on felony murder. Today, the project serves as a resource for journalists, researchers, and families across the country, fueling new advocacy efforts and elevating national awareness of the issue.

Now in her second year at Berkeley Law, Khue continues to root her legal training in service and justice. She is a student leader with the Post-Conviction Advocacy Project, where she and her peers represented an incarcerated client before the California Board of Parole Hearings. She also supports tenants facing housing insecurity through the East Bay Community Law Center’s Housing Clinic.

Looking back, Khue credits her Pflugerville ISD teachers for laying the foundation of her success.

“Mrs. Escaname, Mrs. Parada, Mrs. Levy, Ms. Cohen, Mr. Lawrence, Mr. Robb, Mr. Quarles, Mrs. Ross—they all believed in me when I didn’t know what I was capable of,” she said. “They nurtured my curiosity and taught me that I truly didn’t have any limits. I am endlessly grateful.”

From Pflugerville to Yale, Berkeley, and beyond, Khue Tran exemplifies the power of resilience, education, and advocacy to create lasting change.