OCA Intern Alum: Ricky Ly
Interview by Cassie Micah / Written by Socheata Sun and Kent Tong
FOR SOMEONE RECOGNIZED in Orlando Business Journal’s “40 Under 40,” Orlando Magazine’s “50 Most Powerful People,” Orlando Weekly’s “Ten People Making Orlando a Better Place to Be,” as someone who's had his biography read into the U.S. Congressional Record and invited to the White House twice, you’d think Ricky Ly would come off as big-headed. But if you ever get the pleasure of speaking with him, you’ll be stunned by his humility.
Ly is the son of Chinese-Vietnamese refugees who fled Vietnam after the fall of Saigon. His mother escaped to a refugee camp on Bidong Island off the coast of Malaysia, where she lived for a year until she was sponsored by a family in Indiana to come to the United States, and later settled down in South Florida to live with an uncle. There, she’d meet her husband, and together they’d open a small Asian market in West Palm Beach, where he would be born and grow up.
His family’s market acted as a hub for Vietnamese refugees and other immigrants, contributing to Ly’s interest in food and the ways it can connect people together. This interest followed him to the University of Central Florida, where he wrote about food in the student newspaper, Central Florida Future. After graduating in 2008, he created his award-winning food blog called Tasty Chomps that’s “dedicated to finding culinary adventures throughout Central Florida and around the world.” In 2013, he published his book, Food Lovers’ Guide to Orlando: The Best Restaurants, Markets & Local Culinary Offerings, and in 2024, he appeared in an Orlando-centric episode of the Netflix travel docuseries Somebody Feed Phil.
As passionate as he is about food, Ly’s actually a civil engineer by trade, stemming from a formative trip to Vietnam in 1999 with his mother. The country’s lack of infrastructure—its literal dirt roads—inspired his pursuit of civil engineering to literally and figuratively connect people together. “It opened my eyes to the conditions of life when infrastructure is not available,” he says. “It’s hard for you to get from A to B if you’ve got dirt roads, or no roads at all.”
While studying civil engineering at UCF, he attended an OCA student leadership training held at the University of Miami, which “was so eye-opening to learn about Asian American history and identity" that he founded a civil rights and social justice student org in 2005, the Asian Pacific American Coalition, and became an OCA intern later that summer. He was placed to work at the Department of Transportation’s Office of Civil Rights, where he was able to meet Transportation Secretary Norman Y. Mineta—the first Japanese American to serve on a president’s cabinet—whom he calls an “inspiring" figure, and got to view civil engineering through an equity lens by examining ways to make transportation more accessible for disabled people.
Ricky Ly with Transportation Secretary Norman Y. Mineta during his OCA internship. Ly was placed at the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Office of Civil Rights (2005)
Ly earned his master’s degree in environmental engineering from the University of Florida in 2019 and is currently employed as a transportation and drainage engineer at the international engineering firm Jacobs. On the side, he’s focused on his third love—civic engagement. Since 2022, he's been involved in a passion project he co-founded: AAPIs Coming Together (ACT), a grassroots nonprofit dedicated to getting AAPIs in Florida to vote. ACT partners with APIAVote every year on voter engagement efforts, reuniting him with APIAVote’s executive director Christine Chen—the executive director of OCA National back when he was an intern. “We found out that our efforts this past year resulted in 76% of those that we contacted voted,” he says, while the areas they didn’t reach out to only had 28% show up to vote.
His civic engagement and engineering background helped earn him a spot at the White House's “Building Back Florida” summit in 2023, where he was able to provide input to the Biden administration's efforts in improving public works. He was invited back to the White House the following year as part of their AANHPI Heritage Month celebration, whose guest list included prominent AAPIs in politics and pop culture. “I’m like, What the heck am I doing here in the Rose Garden with Lucy Liu and all these other dignitaries of Asian American culture?” Ly recalls. But the advocate in him didn’t want to waste the opportunity—he spent his time in D.C. lobbying to members of Congress for a ceasefire in Gaza. “I was like, Man, if I’m in D.C. I need to do something with my time here,” he says. Disappointingly, his efforts fell on deaf ears. “No one was listening.”
Ricky Ly (left) at the AAPIs Coming Together’s voter registration booth on National Voter Registration Day (September 2024)
Israel's bombing of Gaza reminds Ly of his own parents who were refugees of war. His mother was a child when the Tet Offensive occurred, where bombs fell from the sky, and she had to escape with her grandfather. “Those kids over there could be my kids,” he says of the war in Gaza, where an estimated 20,000 Palestinian children have been killed. As a father of two young kids, he hopes to instill his advocacy-minded values in them. His efforts are hard to miss: he’s helped raise thousands of dollars for Maui wildfire relief; volunteered with the World Central Kitchen; is currently serving on the board of the Second Harvest Food Bank of Central Florida and World Affairs Council of Central Florida, a nonprofit promoting global understanding and connectedness; and transported children who've survived bombings to their doctors’ appointments. “Thankfully, I’ve had the time and privilege to do so,” he says of his volunteer work. “At the end of the day, I just want to help people.”