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When she was 11, Vanna Howard was in a refugee camp. Now she’s the first Cambodian American state senator in the U.S.
The Lowell resident says she’s focusing on housing, health care, and immigrant communities, while listening closely to the constituents who first recruited her to run.
When Vanna Howard won her seat in the Massachusetts Senate last month, she wasn’t thinking about making history — she was thinking about Lowell.
As the first Cambodian American elected to the chamber, Howard now represents tens of thousands of residents across the 1st Middlesex District. The approach Howard brings to the role, she said, is shaped by a simple idea that she learned while serving as Lowell’s state representative: giving back to the communities that raised her.
“I decided to run because the city of Lowell, that community raised me,” she said. “I wanted to give back, and that’s simply it.”
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Over the past few decades, Lowell has welcomed a growing population of Cambodian refugees, making it the second-largest Cambodian community in the United States. The city has also seen historic milestones in representation, including the nation’s first Cambodian mayor, and Howard as the first Cambodian-American woman elected to a state legislature when she became state rep.
Now serving a larger and more diverse district after five years in the Massachusetts House, Howard said her obligation to actively listen to her constituents remains.
A refugee’s journey
Howard arrived in Massachusetts at age 11 after spending more than two years in a refugee camp in Thailand with her mom, stepfather, and stepbrother, who was born while they were there.
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Howard’s family had fled Cambodia during the Khmer Rouge genocide, a period from 1975 to 1979 in which an estimated 2 million people were killed. Howard lost her father, maternal grandparents, and three younger siblings during that time.
Settling in the U.S. meant learning an entirely new way of life. The family first lived in Brighton, then Dorchester, and finally Revere.
The English language was unfamiliar, the weather was colder, and everyday tasks like grocery shopping required guidance from other Cambodian families in the area. Placed in seventh grade but still learning the alphabet, Howard said she had to learn to adapt.
At first, Howard’s family wasn’t even sure Massachusetts would be a permanent home.
“We didn’t see anything that reminded us of home,” Howard said, recalling her first time at a U.S. grocery store. “All the Cambodian spices, all the vegetables looked so different to us.”
Having survived genocide and the uncertainty of a refugee camp, Howard said they were constantly aware that the next day could bring new challenges.
“Every day we learned to adapt. We learned to understand what’s around us, what’s happening around us,” she said. “But at the same time, we weren’t sure — where are we going next? And so, we learned to just take it one day at a time.”
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Other Cambodian families in the area helped Howard’s family navigate life in the U.S., from enrolling children in school to figuring out Massachusetts’ public transportation system.
Even with that support, life was far from easy.
Many Cambodian refugees in Revere faced racial discrimination and violence in the 1980s. Howard recalled experiencing racism in school and hearing about neighbors’ homes being burned.
“People accosted us, especially as women. We went through a lot, but slowly, people started forming, stepping up,” she said. “There were many good people that embraced us, that welcomed us at the same time when small groups of people didn’t.”
After graduating middle and high school in Revere, Howard attended UMass Boston. In 1991, she moved to Lowell, a city she now confidently calls “home.”
From community work to public office
While living in Lowell, Howard began working as a bilingual legal secretary at a local law firm, helping translate for Cambodian residents.
She later held roles in the Middlesex and Suffolk district attorney’s offices, and spent more than a decade as an aide to former U.S. Rep. Niki Tsongas. After Tsongas retired in 2019, Howard joined Lowell Community Health Center, where she worked in communications and governmental affairs.
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Though active in the community for years, Howard initially resisted calls to run for office. That changed in 2020, when residents encouraged her to challenge longtime incumbent David Nangle, who had served for more than 20 years before becoming embroiled in a campaign finance scandal.
“The city of Lowell was looking for a change,” Howard said. “They wanted me to be that change.”
With people calling her and knocking on her door, Howard found a groundswell of support from residents who wanted to feel truly represented.
“They wouldn’t take no for an answer,” she said.
Eventually, she agreed to run, defeating Nangle in the 2020 Democratic primary and then winning the general election unopposed.
Top priorities
Now in the Senate, Howard said her experience as a state representative has helped ease the transition into her new seat, which had become vacant following the passing of Sen. Edward Kennedy last October. But the scope of her work has grown dramatically: She has moved from representing roughly 43,000 residents across two communities to more than 200,000 across five, she said.
Howard said her focus is on ensuring families’ basic needs are met.
“Now, more than ever, we need to come together at the table and make sure that families and children, working families and children, are protected, and … make sure they have a safe place to live,” Howard said.
Howard said her top priorities upon taking office are to address the housing crisis and expand affordable housing, improve public education, strengthen health care access, and enhance public transportation.
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Health care remains especially personal. As a single mother, Howard once went without health insurance and had to find employment that would provide coverage. Now, she said her priorities go beyond ensuring everyone has insurance — she wants to make sure that coverage is truly affordable for all.
Supporting immigrant communities
Howard said one of her main concerns is the renewed fear she sees among immigrant populations.
“We are now reliving — what’s happening nationally and locally and statewide — the fear again of what we left behind, the fear of that control, of that chaos, of being afraid to even leave your home,” she said.
Over the past year, immigration enforcement has sharply increased in the U.S. under the Trump administration. According to a recent analysis of federal data, ICE has arrested more than 7,000 people in Massachusetts alone since 2025, WBUR reported.
“The trauma, the PTSD is starting to hit home, and I myself have experienced it,” Howard said. “What we see nationally, it’s pretty disturbing, and the wounds that we’re hoping to heal have now reopened.”
Howard connected those concerns to her past work helping immigrants navigate legal systems and protections. During her time working with Tsongas, Howard assisted with cases involving Haitian immigrants after the 2010 earthquake, helping individuals secure documentation when returning home was not an option.
Now, similar uncertainty is affecting multiple immigrant communities.
“For us that arrived here as refugees, we made the United States a home, and we still have families,” Howard said. “Just like our Haitian neighbors, they have families. It’s hard to witness what we see right now — the violence, the chaos, the trauma, the PTSD.”
Looking ahead
Howard’s approach to public service is rooted in listening, which she calls an “art.”
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She advised youth to practice it as well, starting by volunteering and learning the needs of their communities.
“Do it for all the right reasons. Do it because you want to help. You want to make that contribution. You want to make change,” Howard added.
Howard acknowledges that the work is challenging and that no one has all the answers. But she said she approaches every day as an opportunity to refine the “art” of listening, aiming to find solutions for her constituents.
“I’ve been a part of [public service] for 30-plus years. There’s always something new to learn,” Howard said. “I don’t have all the answers … Every day, when I wake up, [my goal] is to give my all, 110%, to listen and to learn and to hear what I can do as their representative, as their senator, to make positive change.”
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