Champions of Change

Champions of Change: Immigrant Innovators

The White House honors eleven immigrant innovators and entrepreneurs – the best and brightest from around the world who are helping create American jobs, grow our economy, and make our nation more competitive.

Co-Founder of ContextMedia, has always had a passion for communication and launched her first media enterprise at age nine in India. While building ContextMedia from the ground up, she branded the...

Riddhiman Das came to the United States in 2008 to pursue an American college education and studied Computer Science, Mathematics and Entrepreneurship. As an undergraduate student, he co-founded...

Dr. Ashifi Gogo is the CEO of Sproxil, a social enterprise that empowers consumers in emerging markets with mobile technology to combat the $600 billion counterfeit goods industry. Under his...

John Herrera is an immigrant from Costa Rica and the Co-Founder of the Latino Community Credit Union, the first fully bilingual financial institution in the state of North Carolina. A pioneering...

Olga B. Koper, Ph.D., born in Poland, works in the Business and Open Innovation group for Energy and Environment, at Columbus, Ohio's Battelle Memorial Institute, the largest nonprofit research...

Dr. Jonas Korlach is Chief Scientific Officer at Pacific Biosciences. He co-invented the company’s SMRT technology with Stephen Turner, Ph.D., Pacific Biosciences Founder and Chief Technology...

Anna Mongayt is a Co-Founder at Upstart—a crowdfunding platform that lets people raise money in exchange for a portion of their future income. Upstart is enabling young people to alleviate...

Victoria Ransom has been an entrepreneur since her early twenties and has developed three companies, the most recent of which, Wildfire, was acquired by Google in 2012. As founder and CEO of...

Zack Rinat is Model N’s Founder and has served as the Chairman of the Board of Directors and as Chief Executive Officer since its inception in December 1999. Previously, Mr. Rinat co-founded and...

Amar Sawhney is an inventor and serial entrepreneur in the field of medical devices. He holds over 120 patents, which form the basis for several first of a kind medical devices that have helped...

Dr. Sivalingam (Siva) Sivananthan is a College of Liberal Arts and Sciences Distinguished Professor and Director of the Microphysics Laboratory (MPL) at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC...