Business Women Awards 2022
Achievement Honoree Diep Nguyen, Elite Title & Closing Services LLC
DIEP NGUYEN is a lawyer and managing member of Elite Title & Closing Services LLC in East Providence, a business she launched in 2004. But the early years of her life were very different from many others in her industry.
Nguyen’s family was forced to flee Vietnam after the war in the 1970s, piling into a boat and sailing into the South China Sea when Nguyen was 2. She arrived in the U.S. in 1979, along with her mother, father, grandmother and brother, who was born in a refugee camp in Taiwan during the journey. Another brother was born in the U.S.
Nguyen was one of nearly 800,000 “boat people” who fled Vietnam by boat and ship during the humanitarian crisis left behind after the Vietnam War in 1975 through the early 1990s.
Rhode Island became Nguyen’s new home thanks to the activism of others.
Nguyen learned a strong work ethic from her parents. The couple, who later divorced, owned a convenience store at one point, Nguyen said.
Early in her work life, Nguyen worked at Honey Dew Donuts because her former in-laws owned a chain of doughnut shops. “It gave me time to take care of my daughter, who I had when I was 21,” she said.
Soon enough, she was looking for more, and found it. “One of my friends at Fleet Mortgage [then a subsidiary of FleetBoston Financial Corp.] said there was a position open in quality control,” Nguyen said. “Since then, I have been in the business. I love it because it’s fast-paced. You meet so many people, and it’s never the same thing twice.”
Nguyen started climbing the ladder, becoming a senior closer with Equity Title & Closing Services Inc. in East Providence in the late 1990s. She became a paralegal and manager at a local office of Chicago Title Insurance Co. from 1999 to 2004.
She used that experience to start Elite Title & Closing, and then bolstered her background with higher education. Nguyen’s decision to start her own practice originated not from displeasure about working for others but from a desire to continue her professional development.
Fluent in Vietnamese, Nguyen can communicate with Vietnamese clients. The trust is so strong that many will ask her to perform legal work outside of real estate or help them read mail they have received – some of it junk mail – that they don’t understand. Many see her as an adviser who speaks their native language.
