Mitchell Pham's incredible journey from Vietnam to NZ and back again with Augen Software Group

Business is Boring is a weekly podcast series presented by The Spinoff in association with Callaghan Innovation. Host Simon Pound speaks with innovators and commentators focused on the future of New Zealand. This week he talks to Mitchell Pham from Augen Software Group.

If the last century was the American century, so far this has been the Asian century. The last three decades have seen amazing growth in wealth and geopolitical influence for a range of Asian countries, in large part due to new trade linkages around the world. And in the digital present, those linkages should only increase. One New Zealander working to help make this happen in both his own business and at ain international level is Mitchell Pham. 

Mitchell came to New Zealand from Vietnam, but a very different Vietnam to the one that exists now. He was 12 years old when he fled the country as a refugee – outrunning machine gun fire surviving exposure to the elements and running out of food before being picked up by an Indonesian oil rig crew. The next two years were spent across four different refugee camps, before finally arriving in New Zealand. Arriving here alone in the mid 1980s, Mitchell's next challenge was to adjust to the education system – but he thrived, meeting friends at university who he set up a company with that would became the Augen Software Group.

Today, his software development company has offices across New Zealand and Vietnam, and Mitchell is a member of a number of national and international bodies helping increase the quality of our digital landscape. He’s the chair of the Digital Council of Aotearoa New Zealand, and New Zealand’s representative on the Asia Society’s Global Council, as well as chair of the the New Zealand Tech Industry Association and the Financial Technology Industry Group. He joined the podcast for a chat about his incredible journey, contributing to the industry and what’s next.

Read more about Mitchell's story on The Spinoff.

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