On Tuesday, the Andrew Carnegie Foundation launched its annual recognition of immigrant contributions to the United States by revealing the 2026 cohort of its prestigious ‘Great Immigrants, Great Americans’ initiative. Now a long-standing program that celebrates the profound, far-reaching impact of immigrants across every sector of American life, this year’s list brings together 26 outstanding individuals who have built extraordinary careers and driven innovation in fields ranging from global finance and tech entrepreneurship to academic research, arts, athletics, and public service.
The 2026 honorees hail from every corner of the globe, bringing diverse perspectives and expertise that have reshaped their respective industries. Representing Sudan is Iman Abuzeid, co-founder and chief executive officer of healthcare platform Incredible Health. Sunil Amrith, the Renu and Anand Dhawan Professor of History at Yale University, earned a spot as one of this year’s inductees, hailing from Kenya. Leading the cybersecurity sector on the list is Nikesh Arora, chair and chief executive officer of Palo Alto Networks, who immigrated from India; he is joined by three other Indian-born trailblazers: Mahzarin Banaji, Harvard University’s Richard Clarke Cabot Professor of Social Ethics; Sanjiv Chopra, a professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School; and Reshma Kewalramani, president and chief executive officer of biotech giant Vertex Pharmaceuticals.
Other honorees include Ingrid Daubechies, James B. Duke Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Mathematics at Duke University, who was born in Belgium; Hernan Diaz, an Argentina-born Pulitzer Prize-winning author; Scotland native Jane Fraser, chair and chief executive officer of global banking leader Citi; German-born Johannes Fruehauf, president and chief executive officer of Biolabs and founder and chairman of LabCentral; and Uruguay-born Gabriela Hearst, co-founder and creative director of the eponymous luxury fashion brand.
The roster also includes Abbas Karimi, an Afghanistan-born Paralympic competitive swimmer; South Korean-born Jeong Kim, founder and chair of digital media company Kiswe; Chinese-American novelist Ling Ma, who also serves as an associate professor at the University of Chicago; Romania-born Cristian Măcelaru, conductor of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra; and El Salvadoran visual artist Guadalupe Maravilla. Joel Mokyr, the Robert H. Strotz Professor of Arts & Sciences at Northwestern University, who immigrated from the Netherlands, and Hiroshi Motomura, Japanese-born Susan Westerberg Prager Professor of Law and co-faculty director of the Center for Immigration Law and Policy at the UCLA School of Law, also earned recognition this year.
Rounding out the 2026 class are Gregory Nagy, a Hungarian-born Harvard University professor of classical Greek literature and comparative literature; Argentina native Antonio Neri, president and chief executive officer of Hewlett Packard Enterprise; Mexican-born Pulitzer Prize-winning author Cristina Rivera Garza, who serves as M.D. Anderson Professor in Hispanic Studies and director of the creative writing program in Hispanic Studies at the University of Houston; British-born James Robinson, a professor at the University of Chicago’s Harris School of Public Policy and the university’s department of political science; Malaysian-born Hock E. Tan, president and chief executive officer of semiconductor leader Broadcom Inc.; Jordanian Nobel Prize-winning chemist Omar Yaghi, the James and Neeltje Tretter Chair Professor of Chemistry at the University of California, Berkeley; and Canadian Michelle Zatlyn, co-founder, president and chief executive officer of cybersecurity firm Cloudflare.
The ‘Great Immigrants, Great Americans’ initiative was created to highlight how immigration has long been a cornerstone of American economic, cultural, and social progress, showcasing the wide-ranging contributions that foreign-born individuals make to the nation every day. This Associated Press coverage of philanthropy and nonprofit work is supported through a collaboration between AP and The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP retains full editorial responsibility for all content. To access more of AP’s philanthropy reporting, visit https://apnews.com/hub/philanthropy.