Kou Voravong
Kou Voravong grew up in Savannakhet and pursued a primary education there. He obtained the « certificat d'études primaires complémentaire indochinois » - Certificate of Indochinese Additional Primary Studies - (CEPCI) in 1930, went afterward to Vientiane and began his first-secondary-school year at the Collège Auguste Pavie. But because of a conflict which opposed him to French Colonial administration, his adopted father was sentenced to prison that same year. As reaction to this situation, Kou Voravong left school and returned to Savannakhet. As an out-of-school teenager, he practiced sports, especially soccer.
Malichansouk Kouanchao
Kouanchao was born in Savannakhet, Laos in 1971 and resettled in Minneapolis, Minnesota in 1979 with her parents and four siblings as refugees from the Laotian Civil War. She attended South High School in Minneapolis in the 1980s. At the University of Minnesota, Kouanchao received a BA in 1998 in Fine Arts, with minors in Chinese and East Asian Studies.