The Swinging Door — and Why I Finally Got to Say Yes to TEDx
2026 TEDx Sioux Falls Speaker Lineup
I applied to speak at TEDxSiouxFalls three times.
The first year, I wasn't selected. The second year, I wasn't selected. Each time, I didn't just move on — I went back. I reached out to organizers. I talked to previous speakers. I asked hard questions about my idea and what I was actually trying to say. I refined, rewrote, and came back.
This year, I got the yes.
I'm honored to share that I'll be a speaker at TEDxSiouxFalls 2026 on April 23rd at the Washington Pavilion — and I want to tell you a little about why this talk matters to me.
The Talk: The Swinging Door
The talk is called The Swinging Door: From Survival to Significance.
It starts in 1993, when my parents moved to Sioux Falls and opened the first Vietnamese restaurant in town. They spent their lives in the Back of House — the kitchen — trading 14-hour days for our family's future. I'm the one who got to step through the swinging door into the Front of House. The degrees. The safety. The meaningful work.
And for a long time, that felt like a betrayal.
The talk explores what researchers call the "Immigrant Paradox" — the counterintuitive finding that second-generation immigrants, who by every measure should be thriving, often struggle more than their parents did. The guilt is real. The dissonance is real. But the reframe I've landed on is this: culture, community, and belonging aren't luxuries we stumbled into. They are exactly what our parents' sacrifice was meant to purchase.
This talk is a call to stop apologizing for stepping through the door — and to start honoring the sacrifice by holding it open for everyone else.
Why It Connects to This Campaign
Running for City Council isn't separate from this talk. It's the next chapter of it.
Stepping through that swinging door — into education, into community, into a life my parents worked 14-hour days to make possible — always came with a quiet responsibility. You don't just walk through and let it close behind you. You turn around. You hold it open.
That's what this campaign is. It's the most concrete way I know to honor what my parents sacrificed — by making sure the city that gave our family a real shot keeps giving that shot to every family that comes after us. Multilingual information. Accessible pathways. Neighborhoods where investment reaches every quadrant. A City Hall that works with people, not around them.
The talk ends on a stage. The work continues at the council table.
Come Hear All of Us
I'm one of nine speakers this year — and I mean it when I say the full lineup is worth your time. From freshwater mussels saving our rivers, to what we really learn in the kitchen together, to the hidden cost of how we treat our leaders — this is a remarkable group of people with ideas worth spreading.
Grab your tickets at the Washington Pavilion.
The event is April 23rd.
Come early, bring someone, and stay for the conversations after.
That's always where the best stuff happens anyway.
It's always been our city, and now is our moment.
Let's rise together. ☀️
— Vince Danh
Candidate, Sioux Falls City Council At-Large | June 2nd, 2026