Acting Sub-Lieutenant Kevin Vuong: Canada’s NATO 2030 Young Leader

Navy News / March 19, 2021

Acting Sub-Lieutenant (A/SLt) Kevin Vuong is a 31-year old Naval Reservist from Toronto, where he has served as a Public Affairs Officer with Her Majesty’s Canadian Ship York for over five years. A/SLt Vuong was recently appointed by NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg as Canada’s NATO 2030 Young Leader, a group of young adults from around the globe, brought together to provide insight for NATO’s 2030 program -- a forward-looking reflection process to strengthen NATO’s political dimension into the coming decades.

On November 9, 2020, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg hosted NATO's first ever Youth Summit. Organized in cooperation with the Munich Security Conference, the summit brought together 18-35 year-olds from NATO member states and partner countries for an online conversation with the Secretary General and Allied leaders.

During the summit, the Secretary General announced the establishment of NATO 2030 Young Leaders, a group of 14 emerging leaders from across the Alliance who will advise him on NATO 2030. Canada’s first and only representative on the advisory group, A/SLt Vuong’s nomination was put forward by the Warsaw Security Forum, which named him a new security leader in 2019. In the role, A/SLt Vuong will provide the Secretary General with input to inform his recommendations for NATO 2030.

“It goes beyond military and defence,” said A/SLt Vuong about his role in developing recommendations. “You could argue that the economy and the emerging trends that we are seeing within the digital economy and technology more broadly contribute to the broader security environment and the information environment that we operate in today.”

During the summit, A/SLt Vuong responded to a question from Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on the challenges of disinformation.

“I am hoping that we can focus on a unified approach against disinformation and misinformation,” he said. “NATO has the capability to set a transnational standard for identifying and combating misinformation in a united and concerted way.”

A/SLt Vuong is the proud son of Vietnam War refugees, and has dedicated his life to serving Canada. Grateful that Canada welcomed his parents when other countries were closing their borders to people in need, A/SLt Vuong joined the Canadian Armed Forces and is a social entrepreneur and lecturer. He is the vice-president and chief operating officer at political intelligence and monitoring firm Delphic Research Group and is the co-founder of TakeCare Supply. TakeCare responded to the COVID-19 pandemic by developing Canada’s first evidence-based reusable mask and manufactured 750,000 masks for North America, employing nearly 200 Canadians in the process.

Within the community, he serves on the board of directors for the NATO Association of Canada, the Together We Stand Military Families Foundation, and chairs the Mencius Foundation. A/SLt Vuong was also a member of the Canadian delegation to the 2013 G20 Summit, and the 2010 G8 and G20 Summits. He previously served as a board director for the Chinese Canadian National Council in Toronto and the Vietnamese Association of Toronto.

A/SLt Vuong is active at the international level with a focus on transatlantic affairs. He is a regular contributor to and an alumnus of The Atlantic Dialogues, The Vatican Symposium, GLOBSEC Forum, and the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs’ Israel Young Leaders Program.

A/SLt Vuong’s alma maters include the University of Toronto and the University of Western Ontario. He moved on to lecture at the University of Toronto and now teaches financial markets at the University of Western Ontario; he also serves on Western’s Council of Presidents and chairs the Dan Management Advisory Council. A/SLt Vuong also completed a bespoke leadership program at the University of Cambridge, following his appointment in 2017 as Her Majesty The Queen’s Young Leader for Canada.