Vanna Sann - Managing Director of Dorsu

GuestsSeason 4

Aug 16

In this episode of Death in Cambodia, Life in America, I sit down with Vanna Sann, a Cambodian American entrepreneur and the founder of Dorsu, an ethical garment company based in Cambodia.

Vanna was born in a refugee camp in Thailand and grew up working class in Lowell, Massachusetts. Like a lot of us in the diaspora, he grew up knowing pieces of what happened to his family, but without always having the historical context to understand how those stories shaped him. He did well in school, eventually earning degrees from Vassar and Georgetown, but there was still this lingering question of Cambodia. At some point, hearing the stories wasn’t enough. He wanted to go see and understand the country for himself. So in 2010, Vanna went back to a place he says he “never really knew” looking for identity.

We talk about what it felt like to arrive in Cambodia as a Cambodian American, the optimism and entrepreneurial energy that made him want to stay, and how his experience eventually led him to Dorsu. Today, Vanna works alongside a team of 30 to rethink what garment production can look like when Cambodian ownership, female leadership, ethical practices, and the people actually making the clothes are put at the center of the business.

In this conversation we touch on some key topics like what it means to be Cambodian American while building a business in Cambodia. What responsibility comes with local ownership? How do you compete in an industry built around producing more, faster and cheaper while also talking seriously about waste and sustainability? How do you measure the value of a business when some of its biggest impacts can’t easily be put into a spreadsheet?

Vanna’s story also gets at something I think a lot of us in the diaspora understand: sometimes going “back” isn’t really going back at all. You’re building a relationship with a country you inherited through your parents’ memories, while figuring out what your own relationship with it gets to look like.

This is a conversation about identity, ownership, business, and what can happen when Cambodian people are given the space to build something on our own terms.