Oswego Is No. 1 for Top 10 Asian Entrepreneur

Math gave Christine (né Huong) Do ’80 a common language to share with her peers and Oswego’s pioneer computer science program gave her a place to excel.

Inc. Magazine named Christine Do ’80 a top 10 Asian entrepreneur in 2010 and 2011. The Vietnam native and Soft Tech Consulting founder used math to bridge the language gap and make a career in computers.

An Inc. Magazine top 10 Asian entrepreneur in each of the past two years, Christine came to America at 17 as a refugee of the Vietnam War. Today she owns and operates Washington, D.C.-based Soft Tech Consulting, which works with several federal agencies developing, supporting and securing software.

Determining that a math-based discipline would be the best way around her language barrier, Christine came to Oswego after one year of high school in the Finger Lakes town of Phelps.

“At the time, computers were just in their beginning,” Christine recalled. “There weren’t many colleges offering computer science in New York.”

Professor Christine Semeniuke and Dr. Mao, along with then-department chair Robert Sebesta nurtured Christine’s love of computers that helped her develop a career that began at Unisys.

“Once you have the foundations of computers, you can build on that,” she said.

Christine started Soft Tech in 1996 as a one-woman shop and finally expanded in 2005.

“I feel so honored to be able to help the federal government to do things more efficiently,” she says. “They are passionate about their missions.”

And she is passionate about her work — 16 hours a day, seven days a week as she describes it. “I’m always in front of a monitor,” she says.

A front-runner in her industry, Christine gives equal credit to her team and the place where her professional dreams began.

“It is one of the gems of the [state] university system,” Christine says of Oswego. “And I am proud to have been a part of it.”

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