Yen Bailey is a lifelong daughter of North Florida. Her parents, Vietnamese refugees who rebuilt their lives from nothing, taught her that the American Dream is built on courage, sacrifice, and service to others. Her father, a South Vietnamese Air Force pilot, flew his crew and dozens of refugees to safety as Saigon fell. Her mother escaped on a fishing boat under fire. They arrived in America with almost nothing, and made their way to Destin, Florida, where Yen and her brother were born and raised. Their belief in this country and their determination to give their children a better life shaped every part of Yen’s upbringing. From them, she learned that service to community isn’t optional. It’s the heart of what it means to be an American.

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Guided by those values, Yen built her career around serving this region. After graduating from Tulane University, she returned home to North Florida to attend Florida State University College of Law and began a career committed to public service. She served as a Senior Attorney with the Guardian ad Litem Program, advocating for abused and neglected children, and later spent more than 13 years as an ethics attorney with The Florida Bar. When her father’s health declined, she stepped away from her career to care for him, true to the family values she was raised with.

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Family is at the center of Yen’s life. She and her husband, Steve, a lawyer, FSU professor, and former Army Green Beret, are raising their two teenage sons in Tallahassee with the same principles her parents instilled in her: service, integrity, resilience, and commitment to community.

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Service for Yen extends far beyond her profession. She co-founded Every Vote Florida to ensure all Floridians have a voice in our elections and served on the board of the Friends of the LeRoy Collins Public Library System, championing literacy and public access to libraries. She volunteers with her family at food banks and building wheelchair ramps, teaching her sons to understand the responsibility they share to help others, just as her parents taught her.

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Today, Yen is running for Congress because North Florida deserves a representative who truly knows this community, its challenges, its hopes, and its extraordinary potential. After years of being overlooked by Congressman Neal Dunn, families across District 2 need someone who will fight for them with the same determination her parents carried to America.

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From the daughter of refugees to a dedicated public servant, Yen Bailey embodies the American Dream, and she’s working to make that dream real for every family in Florida’s 2nd Congressional District.