First Gen In The Media

TV & Film

100

The actor was born in Mexico and started their career making telenovelas there. In 1991, they moved to Los Angeles to study acting and straddled the Hollywood and Mexican acting worlds. They overstayed their US visa and was undocumented for a while before getting their green card. They acquired US citizenship in 2013.

Salema Hayek

200

Born in Sudbury, Canada, a large city in northern Ontario, this FIRST GEN became the host of the Canadian game show "Reach for the Top" in the mid-1960s. In 1973, they decided to try theirluck in Hollywood and moved to the United States.

Alex Trebek

300

born in Chicago to an Irish-Canadian fater and a , mother from German and English descent. Although he died in 1966 from lung cancer, his legacy lives on in countless resorts and our imaginations.

Walt Disney

400

born in Boston to Nigerian parents, of the Igbo tribe. She is best known for her role as Suzanne "Crazy Eyes" Warren on the Netflix series, Orange Is the New Black, for which she won a SAG Award and Primetime Emmy.

Uzo Aduba

500

The "That 70's Show" star was born in the Ukrainian city of Chernivtsi on August 14, 1983, to her parents Mark and Elvira. They later moved to the United States with their parents and their older brother, Michael.

The family struggled at first. Their parents, who moved to the US after the fall of the Soviet Union with just $250 to their name, left behind careers in Ukraine. Their father found work as a cab driver, delivered pizzas, and painted houses while Elvira  began working in a pharmacy. 

Mila Kunis

Creatives

100

 A  Haitian-American author of young adult fiction. They are best known for their young adult novel American Street, which was a finalist for the National Book Award for Young Adult's Literature in 2017.

 Born  Pascale Philantrope, they immigrated from Port-au-Prince with their mother at age four and grew up in Bushwick, Brooklyn, in the 1980s.

Ibi Zoboi

200

an American celebrity chef, restaurateur, television personality, cookbook author, and National Best Recipe award winner for their "Turkey and Hot Sausage Chili" recipe in 2003. They are a regional James Beard Award winner, known for their mastery of Creole and Cajun cuisine and their self-developed "New New Orleans" style. Their are of Portuguese descent on their mother's side, while being of French heritage through their father.

Emeril John Lagasse III

300

was an American artist who rose to success during the 1980s as part of the Neo-expressionism movement. They  first achieved notoriety in the late 1970s as part of the graffiti duo SAMO. By the early 1980s, their paintings were being exhibited in galleries and museums internationally. At 21, they  became the youngest artist to ever take part in Documenta in Kassel, Germany. At 22, they became one of the youngest to exhibit at the Whitney Biennial in New York. 

Jean-Michel Basquiat

400

Having settled first in New York City, they headed west when the gold rush heated up in San Francisco. They partnered with Jacob Davis, a tailor from Reno, Nevada, to patent and produce the long-lasting, reliable workwear that lived well beyond the gold rush: blue jeans.

By the time they passed away in 1902, they amassed a fortune of $6 million and helped establish a brand that, today, boasts $4.6B in annual revenue and employs over 13,000 people worldwide.

Levi Strauss

500

was an American businesswoman.[2][3][4] She co-founded her eponymous cosmetics company with her husband, Joseph Lauter (later Lauder).[5] Lauder was the only woman on Time magazine's 1998 list of the 20 most influential business geniuses of the 20th century. 

born Josephine Esther Mentzer in Corona, Queens,[7] New York City,[1] the second child born to Rose Schotz and Max Mentzer.[8][9] Her parents were Hungarian Jewish immigrants.[1][10][11] Her maternal grandmother was from Sátoraljaújhely and her maternal grandfather was from Gelle (now Holice, Slovakia),[12] while her father had Czech-Jewish ancestry. 

In 1953, Lauder introduced her first fragrance, Youth-Dew, a bath oil that doubled as a perfume.

Estee Lauder

Sports

100

is a Venezuelan professional baseball outfielder for the Atlanta Braves of Major League Baseball (MLB). After signing with the Braves as an international free agent in 2014, they made their MLB debut in 2018, and won the National League Rookie of the Year Award.

 Ronald Acuña Jr.

200

 is an Argentine professional footballer who plays as a forward for and captains both Major League Soccer club Inter Miami and the Argentina national team. Widely regarded as one of the greatest players of all time, They set numerous records for individual accolades won throughout their professional footballing career such as eight Ballon d'Or awards, six European Golden Shoes wins, and eight times being named the world's best player by FIFA.

Lionel "Leo" Messi

300

Born in Torrance, California,  this former Olympian is the third child  of immigrants from Hong Kong. She is a 2-time olympic medalist, a 5-time world champion and 9-time US Champion figure skater.

Michelle Kwan

400

 a Congolese-American professional basketball player. They played 18 seasons in the National Basketball Association (NBA). Nicknamed "Mount Mutombo" for their defensive prowess, they is commonly regarded as one of the greatest shot-blockers and defensive players of all time. Outside of basketball, they are known for their humanitarian work.

Dikembe Mutombo

500

Qualifying as an American break-dancer in the 2024 Paris Olympics after graduating from University of Houston with a degree in kinesiology, they are of Haitian American heritage and have been breakdancing since the age of 12.

 Jeffrey Louis

Music

100

known as the Queen of Salsa, they were an internationally acclaimed singer and dynamic stage performer from the 1940s to the start of the 21st century.

They were also instrumental to the creation and popularization of “salsa,” a new genre of pan-Hispanic music that emerged in the 1960s.

Their long, versatile career broadened the reach of Caribbean and Latin American music, celebrating its African roots.

Celia Cruz

200

Born in Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago to a gospel singer mother, Carol Maraj, and a financial executive father,  Eventually, their family moved to Queens, New York – the Young Money star excelled academically and was admitted to the prestigious LaGuardia High School for Music & Art and Performing Arts.

Nicki Minaj

300

Born Abel Makkonen Tesfaye, the only child of Ethiopian Amhara immigrants. They dropped out of high school and started releasing music on YouTube. He would go on to contribute to Drake's "Take Care" album, most notably "Crew Love"

The Weeknd 

400

Born as Chaim Witz on August 25, 1949, at Rambam Hospital in Haifa, Israel, to Jewish refugees from Hungary. At eight years old, they moved to the USA, where they would later become the lead singer of one of the most famous heavy metal bands in history.

Gene Simmons

500

Appearing on The All-New Mickey Mouse Club (1993–1994) as a child, they would go on recorded the theme song, "Reflection", for the animated film Mulan (1998) and signed a record deal with RCA Records. She rose to fame in 1999 with her self-titled debut album which gained three number one singles "Genie in a Bottle", "What a Girl Wants" and "Come On Over Baby (All I Want Is You)". After winning the Grammy Award for Best New Artist, they followed with Mi Reflejo (2000) which became the best-selling Latin pop album of 2000.

Christina Aguilera 

STEM

100

A First Gen Syrian-American, they were a businessman, inventor, and investor best known for co-founding the technology company Apple Inc. and the founder of NeXT and chairman and majority shareholder of Pixar.

Steve Jobs

200

Perhaps the most famous scientist of all time, was also a refugee. Born in Germany in 1879, they was fortunate enough to be abroad when Adolf Hitler rose to power in 1933, and the United States was fortunate they eventually chose to settle here.

Albert Einstein

300

perhaps the most famous archetypical “mad scientist” figure in modern society. They had emigrated from Serbia at the end of the 19th century, where they studied advanced physics and mathematics. Most famous for their invention of the alternating current induction motor, which enabled the rapid adoption of electricity across the United States. 

Nikola Tesla

400

Born in South Africa in 1971, but came to the United States to study at the University of Pennsylvania, where they got bachelor’s degrees in both economics and physics. They continued to Stanford with the intent of getting a Ph.D. in energy physics, but the internet exploded during his time there and they dropped out to pursue what would become PayPal. They made their first fortune when PayPal was bought by Ebay, and used that money to start two more companies.

Elon Musk 

500

Born to an immigrant family in Pennsylvania in 1929. Their father was a Bengali Hindu and Indian freedom revolutionary who had fled from persecution by the British police to the U.S. shortly before they born. They went on to get a Ph.D. in electrical engineering from MIT. Their research into acoustics and speaker technology would lead to the famous speakers, which carry their name.

Amar Bose