Outstanding Americans by Choice
The Outstanding Americans by Choice initiative recognizes the outstanding achievements of naturalized U.S. citizens. Through civic participation, professional achievement, and responsible citizenship, recipients of this honor have demonstrated their commitment to this country and to the common civic values that unite us as Americans.
USCIS will recognize naturalized citizens who have made significant contributions to both their community and their adopted country on a case-by-case basis.
Note: The following biographies have been provided by the ABC recipients.
2023
Satya Nadella is Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Microsoft. Before being named CEO in February 2014, Nadella held leadership roles in both enterprise and consumer businesses across the company. Joining Microsoft in 1992, he quickly became known as a leader who could span a breadth of technologies and businesses to transform some of Microsoft’s biggest product offerings.
Congressman Raúl Ruiz, M.D., grew up in the community of Coachella, California, where both of his parents were farmworkers. Dr. Ruiz achieved his lifelong dream of becoming a physician through public education.
Dmitri Alperovitch is an internationally recognized thought leader on geopolitics and national security currently serving as the co-founder and executive chairman of Silverado Policy Accelerator, an innovative non-profit think tank focused on advancing American prosperity and global leadership in the 21st century and beyond.
Liana Adrong was born into a family of nine children in Daklak, Vietnam. She arrived in Greensboro, NC in 1996, years after her father served with the U.S. Special Forces during the Vietnam War and was imprisoned for seven years. Coming from a refugee family, she values her Montagnard-Êđê heritage.
Dr. Mona Hanna-Attisha is the Associate Dean for Public Health and C. S. Mott Endowed Professor of Public Health at Michigan State University College of Human Medicine. She is the founding director of the Pediatric Public Health Initiative, an innovative partnership of MSU and Hurley Children’s Hospital in Flint, Michigan.
Born in Seoul, South Korea, Reverend Eugene Cho immigrated to the United States as a child with his parents. After pastoring local churches for nearly thirty years, Rev. Cho is now President and CEO of Bread for the World, a non-partisan Christian advocacy organization made up of individuals, churches, non-profits, and other partners, who work together to advocate for policy changes to end hunger in the United States and around the world by changing the policies and programs that allow hunger to persist.
2022
Stephen L. A. Michael was a brigadier general and deputy commanding general in the U.S. Army. He immigrated from Guyana, South America, in 1979 and was commissioned into the U.S. Army Infantry in 1988.
Blau, the daughter of Holocaust survivors, came to this country as a small child from war-torn Europe after the second World War. As a result of her own refugee status, she became interested in the plight of others who arrived in the United States to pursue a life free of violence.
Fernando Valenzuela is one of the most influential figures in Los Angeles Dodgers history. The left-handed pitching sensation from the small town of Etchohuaquila in Navojoa, Mexico, launched “Fernandomania” in 1981 with one of the most dominant starts for a rookie to begin a season in Major League history.
Estefanía Rebellón is the co-founder and Executive Director of Yes We Can World Foundation, a female-led nonprofit organization that believes every child has the right to education and safe spaces regardless of their location, current legal status or economic background.