Refugee trauma profoundly shapes Vietnamese American collective identity, as is evident in the largest Vietnamese diasporic community located in Orange County, Southern California. Trauma resulting from the violence of the Vietnam War and the process of refugee resettlement led Vietnamese Americans to uphold certain gendered ideologies as traditional. Doing so centered a particular type of family as the basis for community restoration. This refugee family project placed pressure on daughters to be obedient and responsible for the continuation of the family line. This way of thinking prevented women from pursuing personal endeavors to attain individual empowerment. Instead, they were to focus on taking care of the family and home. However, as the experiences of three Vietnamese 1.5 generation women, Mai-Phuong Nguyen, Nicole Nguyen, and Tu-Uyen Nguyen, demonstrated, this was not the only way of being. Through their involvement with Project Ngoc, a humanitarian student organization at the University of California, Irvine, these women transformed traditional Vietnamese gendered ideologies that prioritized community empowerment to also include individual empowerment. They created a new form of political leadership for the 1.5 generation that focused on the community and the individual. In doing so, they created an alternative understanding of kinship and community responsibility. They practiced a political form of generational and community transition, one that empowered youth, particularly young women, to pursue individual growth and community development.