Christine Tran is a Portfolio Manager with Ballmer Group’s team in Los Angeles, where she develops and manages local and regional investments across several of our impact areas, with a focus on education. Christine brings a diverse set of professional experiences in philanthropy, teaching, research, policy, and direct service. She is committed to increasing healthy food access, expanding local opportunities, and building healthy communities through inclusive policies and programs.

Christine is of Teochew and Vietnamese descent. She operates through a lens of lived experiences. Christine is the daughter of Boat People Refugees. Her mother worked in sweatshops, her father worked as a day laborer. She was a WIC, Head Start, public library, and free lunch kid. She grew up in a CalFresh and Section 8 household. She is committed to increasing benefits access, expanding local opportunities, and building healthy communities through inclusive policies and programs.

Her previous work includes leading the Los Angeles Food Policy Council, grantmaking at First 5 LA, teaching for the Los Angeles Unified School District as well as policy and program development across the United States in Los Angeles, Milwaukee, Washington, D.C., Chicago, New York City, and Seattle. She has a diverse background in school food, food justice, P-20 education, nonprofit, philanthropy, and community development.

Christine has written for KCET, PBS, Boom California, and Life & Thyme. She is a graduate of UCLA, Columbia University, and is currently a Ph.D. Candidate at the University of Washington. Christine is also an alumna of the Bill Emerson National Hunger Fellowship, Emerging Leaders in Science & Society Fellowship, the Illinois Early Childhood Fellowship, and the Collaborative Researchers for Education Sciences Training Fellowship (funded by the U.S. Department of Education’s Institute of Education Sciences).