Mission Hills High School senior, Andrew Diep-Tran, has had a great deal of accomplishments throughout 2020. He has a passion for fighting economic illiteracy where learning about economics is limited around campus.
“I want to fill this void both locally and globally and create a sustainable solution to unequal economic education access,” Diep-Tran said.
At the beginning of this year, Diep-Tran started a nonprofit organization named operationEconomics. The goal of his organization is to equalize economic education access for K-12 students all around the world; this includes Zimbabwe, Australia, Indonesia, India, the United Arab Emirates, and the United States. operationEconomics provides opportunities for students to learn and engage in economics.
“I’m grateful to have the opportunity to make a difference in the lives of others as cliché as that is and being able to interact with students from all across the world, from Zimbabwe to Switzerland to Canada to Australia and more,” Diep-Tran said.
Diep-Tran started a business club, FIBE Fellowship, at Mission Hills High School three years ago. He felt that there was not enough support to help guide business-oriented students around the campus.
“My passion for fighting economic illiteracy really derives from school where there aren’t any business, finance, economics, and entrepreneurship classes. I would also like to give a huge, huge shoutout to having really awesome teachers on campus who are super supportive, especially Mrs. Ryan and Mr. Amos,” Diep-Tran said.
Moreover, he serves as one of the advisory board members around the world for the Diamond Challenge, a global platform for youth entrepreneurs. He performs social finance research at the University of California San Diego to help analyze consumer purchasing behavior throughout the stock market. Diep-Tran was named one of San Diego County’s 25 most remarkable teens under the entrepreneur category.
“I’m really happy to have gotten that kind of recognition because it shows that I’m on the right path and it’s reassuring to see like ‘hey, I’m doing good work and some people are starting to realize that,’ ” Diep-Tran said.
Andrew has achieved many awards related to his interest in entrepreneurship; being named one of the National Liberty Museum’s TD Bank Young Heroes throughout the country, named a Young Changemaker by Human Projects, and winning the University of Rochester George Eastman Young Leaders Award. Diep-Tran was recently named a 2020 Straubel Impact Leader by the Straubel Foundation, a title only a few can claim. He has established various operations in efforts to better the support and learning towards economics around the county and the world. Andrew has accomplished numerous economic achievements throughout 2020 and has many more to come.

This article has been updated in order to include Andrew Diep-Tran’s recent accomplishment since he was recently named a 2020 Straubel Impact Leader by the Straubel Foundation. In addition to this, we have corrected the formatting of both his non-profit’s name and his last name.