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.
For more information about the initiative, please see this fact sheet.
Note: The following biographies have been provided by the ABC recipients.
2024
Jesús Francisco de la Teja was born in Cienfuegos, Cuba, in 1956. He came to the United States in 1963, when he and his family first lived in a Hoboken, New Jersey, walk-up tenement. Growing up in New Jersey, he attended Seton Hall University before enrolling at the University of Texas at Austin in 1981 for doctoral work in Latin American history. While at the University of Texas, de la Teja was a research assistant to Pulitzer Prize-winning author James A. Michener.
Basma Alawee is a renowned leader in the global arena. Recognized for her dedication to refugee and immigrant rights, she has been the driving force behind groundbreaking initiatives to welcome refugees. Alawee serves as the deputy executive director at the Community Sponsorship Hub, where she leads engagement on the Welcome Corps, paving the way for diaspora communities and new actors to embrace freedom and opportunity by welcoming refugee families to America.
Channy Chhi Laux is a refugee from Cambodia. She survived the Cambodian genocide that killed 2 million of her fellow Cambodians, including her father and her 12-year-old brother. She spent most of her teenage years in labor camps enduring starvation, horrendous working conditions, sickness, and repeated separations from her family before escaping and immigrating to the United States.
On Nov. 4, 2008, Senator Luz Escamilla, District 10, was elected to the Utah State Senate, becoming the first Latina elected in the Utah State Senate and the first immigrant elected in the Utah State Legislature. Now in her fourth term, Senator Escamilla holds the position of Minority Leader, driving impactful change in legislative initiatives.
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.