Cuong Nguyen works as Prevention Specialist at USBE with primary focus on restorative practices by sharing the concepts and practices to local education agencies under Student Support Section. Cuong also manages the annual “Do the Write Thing” Challenge, a youth violence prevention initiative for 7th and 8th grade students. Cuong recently has been assigned to manage the Juvenile Gang Prevention Grant.

Prior coming to USBE, Cuong had twelve years of work experience focus on juvenile justice policy for the Utah Commission on Criminal and Juvenile Justice, Governor’s Office. For the first seven years, he worked with various juvenile justice stakeholders to develop and implement a plan to reduce the over-representation of minority youth in the juvenile justice system. The last five years, he was a director for the Utah Board of Juvenile Justice that managed the Title II federal grant and to ensure Utah is in compliance to provide core standard of protections for youth when encountered with the juvenile justice system. In addition, Cuong was the director of the Juvenile Justice Oversight Committee, a 24-committee member tasked with overseeing the implementation of the House Bill 239 – an overhaul juvenile justice reform for the state of Utah. On volunteering capacity, Cuong is the program director for a non-profit volunteering organization outside of his regular job.