Today we’d like to introduce you to Tam Phan.
Hi Tam, please kick things off for us with an introduction to yourself and your story.
I was born in Bataan, Philippines, but my story really begins before that—during the Vietnam War. My dad was a lieutenant in the South Vietnamese Navy. During a raid, he was ambushed and imprisoned. He nearly died in prison, but his close friend—who would later become his brother-in-law—smuggled in penicillin to save his life. Eventually, they escaped. They stole a large fishing boat and sailed over 200 people to the Philippines. That’s how I came into the world—in the aftermath of a war, on the other side of a journey for freedom.
When I was still a baby, my family immigrated to the United States. I grew up in San Diego. My earliest memories are of our small apartment in low-income housing in Rancho Peñasquitos. My parents worked incredibly hard—earned their AA degrees, got jobs, and saved up enough to buy a house in Poway. That’s where I spent most of my childhood, all the way until I moved out at 21.
Martial arts was one of the first things I ever truly loved. I grew up watching Bruce Lee movies and Vietnamese-dubbed Hong Kong films like The Legend of the Condor Heroes and Heavenly Sword and Dragon Sabre. I was obsessed. When I was 11, my dad signed me up for a local martial arts studio. By the time I was 15, my instructor asked me to help teach the younger kids. That moment changed my life. I competed throughout high school and into college, but I realized what I loved most was teaching. I started studying how my favorite teachers encouraged me and got me to engage with difficult things—and I brought that into my own teaching style.
Eventually, my instructor got sick, and I was asked to run the studio. I did that for a few years before moving away for college, and that transition was tough. I felt lost. I was good at math and science, but I couldn’t see myself doing that for the rest of my life. Then, almost on a whim, I decided to study music. I had never really explored the arts before, but something about musical performance was exciting to me. It was a new way of seeing the world. I earned an AA in vocal performance and transferred to CSU Northridge to study music education. But about a year and a half in, I burned out.
I moved back to San Diego and bounced between odd jobs—bank teller, inventory manager, short-order cook, math tutor. Eventually, I got the chance to run a martial arts studio in Carlsbad. I ran it for three years, and then opened my own. It felt like everything had come full circle. I had built something of my own doing what I loved. But then life threw another curveball: my dad was diagnosed with cancer. I made the hard decision to close my studio and move back home to help take care of him.
Losing him was complicated. We didn’t have a great relationship. I spent most of my life feeling like I wasn’t good enough—that I had to live up to this impossible standard he set. He was a war hero. There was no competing with that. And when he passed away, it left a strange emptiness. I realized I had spent so much of my life trying to prove something to him. Without him around, I had to face the fact that I didn’t really know what my standard was. I was lost again.
Therapy and support groups helped. It took years, but I started to understand how much of my inner world had been shaped by shame—the kind that makes you feel like you’re never enough, even when no one’s saying it out loud.
Then a friend introduced me to Boys to Men Mentoring. I started volunteering, and after a year, I took a job as the Mentor Coordinator. I still wasn’t totally sure if that was the path for me, so I went back to school, got a business degree, and eventually earned my teaching credential to teach middle school math.
I discovered that what I was aiming to do was create a space where kids could learn to enjoy math, and on the mentoring side, I was discovering that kids were suffering from poor emotional and mental health. It’s really difficult to navigate a landscape that induces anxiety without emotional support, so I refocused my energy into creating emotional safe spaces for teenage boys. That’s what I do now. I recruit, vet, and train volunteers to go into middle and high schools and work with teenage boys. What I’ve realized is that a lot of these kids are struggling—not just with academics, but with emotions they don’t have a safe place to express. I’ve been there. I know what that feels like. And I’ve made it my mission to create spaces where they can be seen and heard without judgment.
Looking back, the path wasn’t straight. It’s been full of detours, losses, and resets. But everything I’ve done—martial arts, music, teaching, mentoring—has led me here: helping young people find their way, just like I had to find mine.
Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
I would say that most of my life has been a struggle. I grew up in an abusive household. Both of my parents were physically abusive and my mom was emotionally abusive. I never really knew if I was in trouble for something. If I was in trouble, it wasn’t always clear what I was in trouble for. I remember discovering that not all parents physically punish their kids when I was 9 years old at my first sleepover at a friend’s place.
It was never enough that I got good grades. If I wasn’t at the top of the class, it wasn’t good enough. I was constantly being compared to relatives and friend’s kids. I didn’t know I was good at anything, so I really hated school. I didn’t think I was good at anything except for sports and I didn’t really accept that I was the best at something until I won my first martial arts tournament.
We grew up in low income housing so we were poor. We didn’t have a lot growing up. I didn’t have many toys as a kid, but I got my first video game console when I was 6 so I spent a lot of time playing Mario Bros. We didn’t go out to eat much and whenever we did, my parents didn’t order much. We were always cutting up coupons and shopping on a tight budget. I don’t know if they still do, but Vons used to offer double value on coupons, so we shopped there a lot.
I lived in a predominantly white neighborhood when we moved to Poway where there was only one other kid in my grade that was Asian and people would always mix us up. It wasn’t until middle school that I met other kids that were like me. I had to learn English in school, like many immigrant kids did. Vietnamese is a tonal monosyllabic language, meaning that every word is a single syllable and there are six tones that can change the meaning of most words. English is obviously multisyllabic so I didn’t know where words started an ended.
Trying to live up to my parents’ standard was impossible. The things they wanted me to do were focused around building prestige for the family. If my parents couldn’t talk to their relatives and friends about it, it wasn’t worth doing or recognizing. The things that I enjoyed seemed to never really line up with the things I was good at.
When my dad passed away, I lost track of my motivation. To put it in perspective, just before he died, I was going to school full time, working a full time job and three part time jobs, and on the Associated Student Body as the College of Business Representative and I never felt like I was making him proud. It took me a long time to let go of associating doing enough with being enough.
Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know about your work?
I love to teach. It doesn’t matter what it is. It started when I was in fourth grade. My teacher asked me if I wanted to teach some first graders how to read. I wasn’t a very good reader at the time because I only started learning English several years prior, but my teacher trusted me to teach a few first graders. I discovered the joy of showing someone how to do the thing that I knew how to do and it was incredibly empowering. I eventually taught three different martial arts, singing, cooking, and physical fitness. I tutored math, accounting, statistics, music theory, and did some small business consulting. Now I teach emotional intelligence, empathetic communication, growth mindsets, multicultural awareness, and the art of facilitation as a mentor.
What I love about teaching is that it’s different for everyone. How one person understands concepts or practices is different from the next, and it’s always a wonderful learning experience for me to learn how someone learns. I take it upon myself to understand how someone understands so I can better deliver information in a way that is most palatable. I’m always open to learning new techniques and I’m always learning more about people. Teaching is a way of connecting for me. If I understand how someone thinks, I can understand who they are and vice versa. Being able to work with someone to navigate their emotions and discover themselves brings me a great deal of joy and fulfillment.
Teaching is an artform and anyone can develop their own method. Some teachers are incredibly compelling because they are charismatic. Some are influential because they have a deep understanding of the person. Some are masters at their craft and some have an innate ability to deliver information in a way that can be easily understood. The best teachers are the ones that know when employ the right strategy at the right time. I’m not there yet, but I’m always refining myself.
We all have a different way of looking at and defining success. How do you define success?
Success is a deep internal acceptance and love of one’s self. If I can love myself and not let the things that I do and the expectations of others determine my value as a person, I have succeeded in seeing and being my true self. A newborn has value for merely existing. Any expectation that I have for that child is a judgment that it’s not enough, and that’s my own projection of what I think. A child isn’t deserving of those projections and judgments, so value is inherent. It’s just a matter of striving to see past what the world thinks we all should be and seeing who we really are. If we can see that and believe that, there’s no greater success.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.boystomen.org
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/boystomen_sd?utm_source=ig_web_button_share_sheet&igsh=ZDNlZDc0MzIxNw==
Image Credits
Moses Farrow
