Lan is devoted to social justice issues that affect the Asian American community. She recently graduated from Amherst College, where she received her B.A. in Cognitive Neuroscience with a minor in Asian American Studies. During her time at Amherst, she was a founding member of the Five-College Pan Asian Network (5PAN), an intercollegiate APA organization that seeks to raise awareness and mobilize students around such issues as on-campus hate crimes, immigrant rights, educational disparity, and more.

Abroad, Lan worked at an orphanage for physically and mentally disabled children in Saigon, Viet Nam through the Tom Gerety Fellowship for Action, and studied in Denmark through the Minorities and Multiculturalism program. She currently divides her time between the National Asian Pacific American Women's Forum and the Asian American Justice Center as an APA Institute for Congressional Studies Fellow. At both of these organizations, Lan will be working on immigrant rights and health care reform issues.