NEW NEW AMERICA AMERIC ★ OUR PUBLIC DEBATE OFTEN FRAMES IMMIGRATION AS A THREAT: ARE IMMIGRANTS TAKING AMERICAN JOBS? ARE THEY A SECURITY DANGER? THESE ARE UNDERSTANDABLE QUESTIONS—BUT THEY OVERSHADOW THE FACT THAT FOR MOST OF THE WORLD, AND FOR MILLIONS OF AMERICANS, IMMIGRATION TO THE UNITED STATES REPRESENTS OPPORTUNITY AND HOPE. HERE ARE 25 IMMIGRANTS LIVING AND WORKING IN THE U.S, WHOSE SUCCESSES ARE SHAPING THE FUTURE OF THE COUNTRY —AND REMINDING US THAT THE AMERICAN DREAM SHOULDN’T BE A NATIONAL NIGHTMARE. ILLUSTRATION BY HARRY CAMPBELL HARRY BY ILLUSTRATION WORTH.COM AUGUST-SEPTEMBER 2016 059 DAVID KWAME ANTHONY APPIAH purchase of land for the team’s new sta- into telomerase, an enzyme crucial to BECKHAM dium in Miami; international phenomenon healthy DNA, would win her, along with PLACE OF BIRTH: LONDON Cristiano Ronaldo is reportedly consider- two colleagues, the Nobel Prize. She was TITLE: PROFESSOR OF PHILOSOPHY, ing playing for the team. named head of the Salk Institute, one of NEW YORK UNIVERSITY; COLUMNIST, THE NEW YORK TIMES the world’s most prestigious and influen- tial centers for medical research, in 2015. IMPACT: ALTHOUGH BORN IN THE UNITED PREET BHARARA KINGDOM, KWAME ANTHONY APPIAH PLACE OF BIRTH: FEROZEPUR, GREW UP IN GHANA. His father, who PUNJAB, INDIA SERGEY BRIN came from a royal Ashanti lineage, was PLACE OF BIRTH: MOSCOW a lawyer and diplomat, and his mother TITLE: U.S. ATTORNEY FOR THE SOUTHERN DISTRICT OF NEW YORK was a novelist and children’s book writer. TITLE: COFOUNDER, GOOGLE; PRESIDENT, ALPHABET; DIRECTOR, X Appiah studied at Cambridge, where he IMPACT: PREET BHARARA CAME TO THE NEW AMERICA earned a PhD in philosophy in 1982. In U.S. WITH HIS PARENTS IN 1970, WHEN IMPACT: SOVIET RUSSIA WAS NOT KIND the decades since, he has emerged as HE WAS JUST 2. Before becoming U.S. TO SERGEY BRIN’S JEWISH PARENTS, who perhaps the most influential social phi- attorney in 2009, he attended Harvard made the difficult decision to immigrate losopher and ethicist working in the Eng- College and Columbia Law School, then to the U.S. when Brin was 6 years old. lish language. Through professorships at served as chief counsel to U.S. senator After receiving a master’s in computer Princeton and now NYU, his gracefully Chuck Schumer and as assistant U.S. at- science from Stanford University, Brin written column in the New York Times—in torney. Currently, Bharara has led inves- went on to cofound Google with class- which he analyzes readers’ real-life ethi- tigations into corruption on Wall Street mate Larry Page, and became recogniz- cal travails—and his critically acclaimed and in New York State government and able as a proponent of Google Glass. 2006 book Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in the New York penal system. But Bharara Brin presides over Alphabet, the parent a World of Strangers, Appiah has pro- aspires to be not just a prosecutor, but conglomerate of the Google empire, mulgated the classical philosophy of also a leader, speaking at colleges and and directs X, an incubator company SAFRA cosmopolitanism, summed up in his core law schools around the country about the for product concepts in the early stages CATZ question: “What do we owe strangers relationship between culture and ethics. of development. When Brin discovered by virtue of our shared humanity?” He His best speaking opportunity, he told that he possesses the mutated gene that argues that all people share certain basic this magazine in 2014, was presiding over indicates Parkinson’s, he set out to beat values and that we are bound by those a naturalization ceremony in Manhattan. the odds for himself and others. Today, values and an obligation to other people “There were 75 new Americans from 31 the new Alphabet life sciences company as well as ourselves. His philosophy does different countries,” Bharara remem- Verily will target solutions for managing not praise diversity for diversity’s sake, bered. “And I said to those 75 people, ‘I and curing the disease, as well as cancer, KWAME nor does he preach relativism; rather, bet you cannot identify any other country diabetes and heart problems. ANTHONY Appiah acknowledges diversity as a reality where this is happening right now, where APPIAH and looks beyond it for common ground. 75 people from 31 different countries are becoming citizens. You know why? Be- SAFRA CATZ cause there is no such country.’” PLACE OF BIRTH: HOLON, ISRAEL DAVID BECKHAM TITLE: CO-CEO, ORACLE PLACE OF BIRTH: LONDON ELIZABETH BLACKBURN IMPACT: BORN IN ISRAEL, SAFRA CATZ TITLE: CO-OWNER, MIAMI MOVED TO THE U.S. AS A CHILD. She BECKHAM UNITED PLACE OF BIRTH: HOBART, TASMANIA started her career in finance before join- TITLE: PRESIDENT, SALK INSTITUTE FOR IMPACT: ALTHOUGH DAVID BECKHAM ing Oracle in 1999 as a senior vice presi- BIOLOGICAL STUDIES MADE HIS NAME AS A SUPERSTAR dent who reported directly to founder STRIKER IN EUROPE, where he played for IMPACT: ONE OF THE WORLD’S FOREMOST Larry Ellison. In 2001 she was appointed Manchester United and then Real Madrid SCIENTISTS, BLACKBURN CAME TO THIS to Oracle’s board, and she became El- from 1992 to 2007, he chose the United COUNTRY IN 1975 to do post-doc work in lison’s right hand during major acquisi- States as his home when his soccer ca- molecular and cellular biology at Yale. tions, such as Oracle’s hostile takeover of reer entered its twilight years. He played Part of the draw was the women’s move- PeopleSoft and its $7.4 billion purchase for Major League Soccer’s LA Galaxy ment in this country, which encouraged of Sun Microsystems. She was promoted from 2007 to 2012 as part of a bid to her, she has said, to believe that she from president and CFO to co-CEO bring global stars to popularize the U.S. “would have a career in which she could alongside Mark Hurd in 2014, and in 2015, league. He also negotiated a smart con- thrive.” She headed west to conduct her $57 million pay package made her the tract that gave him preferential status if research at the University of California, highest-paid female executive in the U.S. he ever wanted to own an MLS franchise. Berkeley and UC, San Francisco. An ad- Notoriously publicity shy, Catz’s influence Now Beckham heads Miami Beckham vocate for stem cell research, Blackburn at Oracle—and thus, on tech and busi- United, the company that is launching an was ousted from George W. Bush’s Presi- ness generally—has been unmistakable. MLS team in Miami. He played a major dent’s Council on Bioethics in 2004, re- “There’s no difference between Safra and role in improving the visibility of MLS portedly because her views clashed with Larry,” former Oracle exec Mark Barrene- during the 2000s, and the Miami team the president’s. “As a naturalized citizen,” chea told the Los Angeles Times in 2006. could be the final element needed to she later said, “I have an immigrant’s love “One’s just at the microphone, and the bring the league into mainstream popu- for my country. But our country must not other is behind the curtain.” larity. In March Beckham announced the fail us.” In 2009, Blackburn’s research SERGEY ELIZABETH PREET BECKHAM: MATTHEW ASHTON/GETTY IMAGES; CATZ: TONY AVELAR/GETTY IMAGES; BHARARA: ANDREW BURTON/GETTY IMAGES; BLACKBURN: TIM MOSENFELDER/GETTY IMAGES; BRIN: PETER FOLEY/GETTY IMAGES BRIN: PETER FOLEY/GETTY IMAGES; TIM MOSENFELDER/GETTY BLACKBURN: IMAGES; BHARARA: ANDREW BURTON/GETTY IMAGES; AVELAR/GETTY TONY CATZ: IMAGES; ASHTON/GETTY BECKHAM: MATTHEW BRIN BLACKBURN BHARARA WORTH.COM AUGUST-SEPTEMBER 2016 061 JAN JHUMPA ANA CORRALES and her family: In 2017, her son Alberto he questioned in the Financial Times. KOUM LAHIRI will debut a gallery in Georgetown, Md. “Or they have to extract any intelligence PLACE OF BIRTH: SAN JOSÉ, COSTA RICA or humanity or truth from it. Why?” TITLE: CHIEF FINANCIAL AND OPERATING OFFICER, NEST LABS MOHAMED A. EL-ERIAN IMPACT: ANA CORRALES HAS LIVED IN PLACE OF BIRTH: NEW YORK JAN KOUM COSTA RICA, MEXICO and throughout PLACE OF BIRTH: KIEV, UKRAINE the West Coast of the United States, TITLE: CHIEF ECONOMIC ADVISOR, but Silicon Valley is where she is mak- ALLIANZ; AUTHOR, THE ONLY GAME IN TITLE: COFOUNDER, WHATSAPP TOWN: CENTRAL BANKS, INSTABILITY, ing her mark as a rare female and Latina IMPACT: JAN KOUM GREW UP IN THE SO- AND AVOIDING THE NEXT COLLAPSE leader in the tech industry. She came VIET UNION WITHOUT RUNNING WATER. to the area to attend Stanford, where IMPACT: THROUGHOUT HIS CAREER, After he and his mother immigrated to she earned a master’s in engineering MOHAMED EL-ERIAN HAS CONSISTENTLY Mountain View, Calif., in 1992 when he NEW AMERICA economic systems in 1997, and then got REMINDED AMERICANS THAT WE ARE was 16, they lived off food stamps. But to work. She devised and patented a NOT AN ECONOMIC ISLAND, helping to Koum’s luck started to change when he new method for storing solar energy, explain the U.S. to the world and vice enrolled at San Jose State University to cofounded the startup SunModular and versa. El-Erian was born in New York in study computer science and then went brokered its sale to Nanosolar in 2010 1958 when his father, an Egyptian dip- to work for Yahoo. In 2009, he cocreated while a senior executive at Cisco. She lomat, was working there. The family WhatsApp. The mobile messaging app is was at Cisco for 18 years, and through its returned to Cairo soon after, but in 1968 now one of world’s most used—handling Latino resource program Conexión, El-Erian’s father took a United Nations job billions of messages every day—and is Corrales became a role model for minor- and the family came back to New York.