For many, the nature of one’s identity is a question that rarely has a defined answer. What, after all, makes you, you? Is it the country you were born in? Your parents’ nationality? Where and what makes you feel most at home? I was born in Singapore to an English dad and Japanese mum. At the age of eight, we moved to Tokyo, the city I was raised in and the city I consider to be “home”. Despite such feelings, I have been and always will be aware of the fact that even though I consider myself Japanese, it’s difficult for most people—strangers and even close acquaintances—to feel the same way. It’s the eternal curse of the mixed-raced kid. In Japan there’s even a word for it, “haafu”, which is a kind of Harry Potter-esque muggleblood term denoting someone who’s half-Japanese half-something else, the connotation being you’re not completely whole or pure. Growing up, the question of my identity has brought about mixed feelings: anger, alienation, and an eventual sense of indifference. Older now, I don’t think about it as much as I used to, which is why I’m always intrigued whenever I meet someone who’s ever-curious in their pursuit of understanding not only their own identity, but that of others as well. Zoé is one such explorer.
Born in Vietnam, Zoé was adopted and relocated to France all by the time she turned one and a half years old. While from the outside looking in this might’ve seemed like a difficult time, Zoé was clear about the fact that her adoption was never a secret. This meant that as she grew older, it was never a subject she felt any need to question or mull over. It was out in the open and there’s a strength that comes from letting things be seen and heard, no matter how complex, challenging, or contentious they might be. And so Zoé grew up in Paris, living a life that was as ordinary as any other kids’. She went to school, hung out with friends, and the years passed in a normal, almost humdrum manner. Going into our conversation I had a preconceived notion of Zoé as being, like myself, someone who’d grown up thinking of themselves as an outsider. I was surprised then to find that despite her past, she’s always been sure of her identity as a Parisian. So much so that even as a child, Zoé was often the first one to joke about her differences. She recognised the oriental shape of her eyes, how she could be perceived as the stereotypical, “little Asian girl”. Despite that, she never let those differences define her. She was who she wanted to be. It was a kind of confidence I found impressive, a sort of middle-finger to those who might try to pigeonhole her in one way or another. She was happy to challenge norms, to be and do what might be outside of the box. This showed itself in another way when it came time to decide what she wanted to do for university. Rather than opting for the stability of a career in business, Zoé decided to attend École Estienne University in Paris for graphic design. She admits her parents played a large part in convincing her to head down the more artistic route, but I have a hunch Zoé knew it was what she was meant to do all along.
Zoé spent five years at the École Estienne. First she studied graphic design before learning about design & communication as well. It was during her studies that she got her first taste of work in the field. First, as an intern at an agency called TBWA\NEBOKO. She recalled the period as enjoyable not necessarily because of the work itself, but due to the fact that she liked the people she was working with. It was this love of meeting and connecting with people that really started to show Zoé what could be possible with her job. She wasn’t the only one who noticed this, as during our conversation she recalled how one of her professors told her that she was a people-person through and through. When you think about what Zoé’s doing now, you know that sentiment hits the mark.
In her last year of university, Zoé started working part-time for Mutant Paris. It was a smaller, independent agency where each employee tried their hand at every role. Given that she always loved experimenting and putting herself outside of her comfort zone, her time at Mutant Paris gave Zoé everything she was looking for in terms of job satisfaction. On the flip side, being given the freedom to try her hand at a variety of roles also made Zoé realise one irrefutable truth: you can’t be good at everything. Having people you can trust in all aspects of life is paramount. This made Zoé reflect. Her identity as an adoptee had followed her throughout her life. However, rather than let it be a cause for pain and suffering, she’d considered it a mark of her innate strength and spirit. This meant that growing up, she’d always wanted to help and she did just that by volunteering at a variety of organisations like a music webzine called Dans ta Face B and a feminist group known as Venus Club. Now that she was working as a graphic designer and art director, and learning about the different modes of communication one can access through those mediums, Zoé wanted to help out more. She started searching.
Three years ago, Zoé joined Banh Mi Media as a volunteer. As a media agency centered on highlighting inspiring stories about Asians through podcasts, events, and screenings, it seemed to Zoé like the perfect place to spend her free time. Initially she helped by providing illustrations and taking part in collaborations with brands like Uniqlo. Not only were these projects exciting and she was able to leverage her expertise as a graphic designer and develop her skills in art direction, she was also discovering a community that was like her. She spoke of being especially inspired by Linda Nguon, the founder of Banh Mi Media and someone who quickly became a mentor. While everything got off to a good start, at some point Zoé had another realisation: the majority of her colleagues at Banh Mi had backgrounds she never had. While she was Vietnamese, she’d been adopted by French parents. On the other hand, those at Banh Mi at least had one Asian parent which meant that they had an understanding of the culture in a way she never did. Some celebrated Tết. Others knew how to eat foods which to Zoé were dishes she’d only ever heard about. This, combined with the fact that she was older, more sure of herself, and part of a community that supported and understood her, gave her the push to finally visit the country she’d left as a baby. It was time. Vietnam.
In January of 2024, Zoé landed in Saigon. The purpose of her visit didn’t have anything to do with finding her biological parents. Really, what she wanted was to reconnect with Vietnam as well as celebrate her birthday there—on the 22nd—though it didn’t take long before she realised that given how messy things get during an adoption, perhaps she wasn’t actually born on that day. Nonetheless, she turned twenty-five on that trip, and after a quarter of a century away from the country, it was an altogether emotional moment. However, that wasn’t to say that the whole experience was a great one. Returning to Vietnam brought about a myriad of difficult truths she had to face. Of those, the most immediate was the fact that while she looked like most of the locals around her, she had trouble relating to them in any way. This is a problem that plagues most people who’ve moved away from the country they’re from, and causes a kind of alienation akin to that sense of being in a room full of people and still feeling lonely. Zoé recalls how locals would speak to her—expecting her to understand—only to give up after they’d realise she wasn’t like them. In many ways, Vietnam made Zoé understand just what it meant to feel like an outsider. Despite looking like the people around her, she wasn’t the same. All of this came to a head when she was in Bến Tre. She stayed at an ecolodge and one evening was speaking to the owner about her story. At the end the owner, who’d been listening attentively, simply said, “Welcome home.” Those two words did more for Zoé than the whole trip combined.
Upon returning to France, Zoé started thinking about what she wanted to do moving forward. Visiting Vietnam had sparked her lifelong desire to see more of the world and potentially live abroad, and this is when she started thinking about New York. She’d gone to the city in the summer of 2023 with the hope of potentially landing a job somewhere, but she wasn’t able to find what she wanted. However, what she did find was a mentor called Laurent François. He’d worked in advertising for the bulk of his life but also wrote a weekly newsletter on social media usage. Zoé met him through a mutual acquaintance and from then on she began to consult Laurent on most life-altering decisions she had to make. Conversations with him played a great role in helping her decide what to do while she was back in France.
So began a period of relative comfort in Zoé’s life. She’d visited her motherland, learned more about herself, and now she was in a position where she had a stable relationship, social life, and job at an agency in Paris called Jésus & Gabriel. Still, something was missing. Things just felt a little too good, as if she’d already done a lot of what she’d set out to do and now she was just coasting along, not really challenging herself or attempting anything different. She started to have the thought: if New York was off the table, then where? She asked Laurent what he thought and through their talks, the idea of living and working in Vietnam started to seem more attractive. For starters, its rapid development in the global economic and cultural scene meant that she’d be in a place where she could live a life of creative, social, and economic freedom that would simply be impossible to sustain in France. Besides that, she’d also have the opportunity to further connect with her roots. After a while it was hard to argue against the idea and so in October of 2024, she decided it was time to go. She admits she never considered what her parents would think but when she told them they were happy. There was nothing left to do. Zoé booked a flight.
Back in Saigon, Zoé dove headfirst into the culture. Out of an almost childlike desperation, she tried to fit in immediately. This materialised, most notably, in the fact that when she rode a motorbike she was covered head-to-toe in the full sunprotective getup. There was even an incident where she crashed into an older lady while driving and the lady, visibly stirred, started shouting at Zoé in Vietnamese. In a strange way it made her feel good, as if it somehow made her more part of the community. In the time that she’s been in Saigon as of our conversation in October 2025, Zoé believes she’s grown more than she ever has. She attributes this to being out of her comfort zone, but also to the fact that she’s making concerted efforts at learning new things. Whether it was figuring out how to ride a motorbike, collaborating with a variety of local brands on projects, or the eternal quest to master Vietnamese, she’s always got something new on her plate. Having known her for a short while now, I’m surprised by just how well she’s acclimatised to the country. When I asked her about how she’s done this, she said, “I think if you want to make a place feel like home, you have to create habits there”. For Zoé, this has meant going to Time’s House cafe on Phạm Viết Chánh almost everyday. As if visiting the same location wasn’t enough, she takes it a step further by always ordering a cà phê muối (salt coffee) and cơm bò xào (stir-fried beef with rice) while she spends hours working and people-watching. Beyond that her habits include going to Khoai Bar for drinks with friends, photography, as well as joining cinema and ceramics groups where she can meet like-minded people.
Moving to Vietnam gave Zoé a whole range of opportunities that she otherwise might not’ve been able to experience. However, that wasn’t the only big change she’d made. The idea for Hybrids Conversations started back when Zoé was still living in Paris and volunteering with Banh Mi Media. Though she remained invested in the work, there came a point when she couldn’t help but feel the distance between her and her colleagues widen. As mentioned, they had innately different backgrounds. While Banh Mi did a considerable amount for people of dual-heritages, Zoé wanted to tap into something deeper and more personal. Hybrids Conversations started with the idea of how when people consider adoptees, they think of them as children. But what happens when adoptees get older? Zoé got to thinking: where are the stories of adult adoptees, those fully-formed human beings with jobs, relationships, and social lives just like the rest of us? With that, Hybrids Conversations had a mission. Through recording herself and interviews with others, Zoé wanted to share the stories of not only adoptees but also people who have a sense of being “in-between”. Whether you’re mixed-race, haafu, or whatever other term you want to use, the sentiment goes back to that feeling of how one’s understanding of their identity is never as simple as the country they were born in, their parents’ nationalities, or what’s written on their passport. With Hybrids Conversations, Zoé could capture the thoughts of people who—like her and many others around the world—have had to discover themselves through the process of life itself. By doing so perhaps she could give others who were confused, hurt, or lost a chance at finding out that they weren’t alone. Even if you’re adopted, there are ways you can adapt.
When Hybrids Conversations began, Zoé started by filming a series of videos where it was all about her. The idea was to provide a background on her story as well as the stories of adoption and adoptees. It didn’t take long for her to realise that if Hybrids Conversations was really going to make any difference, she had to point the camera at others. Her first interview was with Canadian-Vietnamese photographer, Quang Hai Nguyen. From the beginning, her goal was to avoid approaching interviewees and the subjects they discussed from a place of activism or politicism. Ultimately, all Zoé wanted to do was have a conversation. To talk and to let the words flow freely. Out of the eight interviews she’s done so far, she’s spoken to several Vietnamese adoptees, a French-Cambodian director called Davy Chou, and a French-Vietnamese photographer whose mission has been to document South American immigrants entering Spain. Zoé highlights this one as it’s an interview about an immigrant from one country calling attention to stories of immigrants from another country. She also recalled her conversation with Chou. Director of a film called “Return to Korea”, Chou explored the relationship of adoptees returning to Korea, with a focus on the story of one of his friends and the love/hate relationship that people can have with their motherland. Through these conversations, Zoé created a platform that spotlights the myriad of stories that make up the lives of adoptees and those that are “in-between”. They have proved time and time again that it’s not all marred with sadness and grief. Often it’s about strength, spirit, and the beauty inherent in every individual.
In January of 2025, Zoé’s work with Hybrids Conversations and her time at Banh Mi Media culminated in an event called Cảm Ơn Day. She returned to Paris where she held a mixed-media exhibition about her first trip to Vietnam, as well as participated as a speaker on a panel where she introduced the world to what she’d been doing with Hybrids Conversations. Despite Banh Mi’s reputation as a place where children of immigrants came together, this was a moment where adoptees showed up for the purpose of hearing Zoé talk. Five-thousand people attended and for Zoé, Cảm Ơn Day represented something of a homecoming.
Zoé’s now been in Vietnam for over a year and her work with Hybrids Conversations hasn’t slowed down. She’s recently uploaded a talk with a woman from Madagascar who runs an association in Paris called Hype Mada. Beyond that, she also wants to have a conversation with a friend from Senegal who works as a director. The goal, as ever, is to highlight stories and offer spaces where individuals—whether they’re adoptees, mixed race, or people who simply have a sense of being “in-between”—can connect. There are challenges that come with that because Zoé knows these are conversations that have to happen face-to-face, but every time she ends up sitting down with someone she’s astounded by just how willing they are to reveal themselves. One example of this was at an event she hosted in Saigon in December 2025 called The Blend. Centered around a talk between Zoé and three guests, The Blend dove into what it means to live in-between cultures in an attempt to celebrate hybridity, discover new perspectives, and connect across worlds.
All in all, it seems as though Zoé has created a home in Vietnam and even discovered some of her Vietnamese identity in the process. But then again, perhaps it was always there, just waiting for the right trigger or moment to bloom. Perhaps it was always within her, and it was never something she actually had to prove. After all, the nature of one’s identity is a question that rarely has a defined answer. When you’re a hybrid, haafu, or somewhere in-between, that question becomes that much harder to contemplate. However, through talking to Zoé what I’ve learned is that you’re also allowed to just be who you say you are. More so than that, the truth is that sometimes questions don’t need answers. All you have to do is live life the way you want to.
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