Adam Ozimek is a labor economist and Chief Economist at the Economic Innovation Group (EIG), where he leads research on economic dynamism, demographics, remote work, and immigration. A former Chief Economist at Upwork and senior economist at Moody's Analytics, he became one of the most-cited voices on the future of work, repeatedly arguing that remote work is a 'general-purpose technology' that will reshape where and how Americans live and work. Known online as @ModeledBehavior, he pairs national policy influence with running a small entertainment business in his hometown of Lancaster, Pennsylvania.
Alex Nowrasteh is Senior Vice President for Policy at the Cato Institute and one of the most cited and combative voices in the U.S. immigration debate. A self-described 'radical' for open borders, he turns the standard fears about immigration - crime, terrorism, welfare, wages, culture - into testable claims and then publishes the numbers. He co-wrote the prize-winning 'Wretched Refuse?' and the rebuttal handbook 'The Most Common Arguments Against Immigration and Why They're Wrong,' and he is a regular on Capitol Hill, on cable news, and across the op-ed pages.
Alex Tabarrok is a Canadian-American economist, the Bartley J. Madden Chair in Economics at the Mercatus Center and a professor of economics at George Mason University. With Tyler Cowen he co-writes the influential blog Marginal Revolution and co-founded Marginal Revolution University, one of the largest free online libraries of economics education. His work spans patent reform, the economics of innovation, high-skilled immigration, bounty hunters, and voting theory, and he became a prominent public voice during the COVID-19 pandemic advising the US government on incentives to accelerate vaccine production.
Catherine Rampell is an economics journalist who turned spreadsheets into prime time. After 11 years as a Washington Post opinion columnist, she now runs the economics desk at The Bulwark, writes the 'Receipts' newsletter, and co-anchors 'The Weekend: Primetime' on MS NOW. Her trademark is data-driven argument: charts, receipts and footnotes deployed against political spin, on immigration, inflation, trade and the cost of living.
David J. Bier is the Director of Immigration Studies at the Cato Institute, where he holds the Selz Foundation Chair in Immigration Policy. A relentless data-driven analyst of legal immigration, border security, and interior enforcement, he is best known for showing that fewer than 1 percent of people who want to move to the United States can legally do so, and for the Powerball analogy that reframed the legal-immigration debate. His research has been cited by the U.S. Supreme Court and multiple federal appeals courts, and he testifies regularly before House and Senate committees.
Reihan Salam is the fifth president of the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research, a Brooklyn-born son of Bangladeshi immigrants who climbed from editorial researcher to one of the most cited voices on the American right. A former executive editor of National Review and associate editor of The Atlantic, he co-wrote Grand New Party with Ross Douthat and authored Melting Pot or Civil War?, making the case for a working-class, multi-ethnic conservatism and a skills-based immigration policy.
Anthony Vidergauz is the former CEO of California Closets who turned a struggling $2 million acquisition into a $300 million-per-year national brand. A South African immigrant and trained lawyer who arrived in the US in 1986 with $5,000, he joined California Closets in 1987 as legal counsel, then acquired the company from Williams-Sonoma in 1994. Over the next 13 years, he transformed it through lifestyle marketing - including a magazine sold at Barnes & Noble - and franchise relationship-building, growing to over 100 locations across North America and six countries. After selling in 2007, he now runs The Paradise Group, a boutique consulting firm advising franchise businesses on strategy, culture, and leadership.
Paulo Martins is the Brazilian-born founder and CEO of Arena (arena.im), a San Francisco-based AI-powered community engagement platform that lets brands embed live chat, live blogs, and audience interaction tools directly on their own websites with a single line of code. After stints at NASA, Ubisoft, and Hulu — where he helped grow the streaming company from 100K to 7 million paying subscribers — Martins founded Arena in 2017 with a clear thesis: businesses should own their audience, not rent it from social platforms. By 2022, Arena had grown to 25,000 customers across 150 countries and closed a $13.6M Series A led by CRV, with backing from heavyweights like David Sacks, Des Traynor, and Olivier Pomel.
Amjad Masad is the co-founder and CEO of Replit, the AI-powered cloud development platform that has grown to over 50 million users and reached a $9 billion valuation after its $400 million Series D in March 2026. Born in Amman, Jordan - where he learned to code at internet cafes by the 15-minute slot - Masad built Replit to remove the setup friction he experienced firsthand. After stints as founding engineer at Codecademy and on Facebook's JavaScript infrastructure team (where he helped build Babel.js and Jest), he co-founded Replit in 2016 with his wife Haya Odeh and brother Faris. Rejected by Y Combinator four times before acceptance, Masad now leads a platform where anyone can go from idea to deployed software without writing a line of code - believing there will be a billion software creators in the AI era.
Joydeep Bhattacharyya is a General Partner at Canaan Partners, a leading venture capital firm, where he focuses on enterprise and cloud platform investments - particularly in cybersecurity and automation. A former Microsoft engineer who helped shape Office 365 and Skype for Business, and a one-time enterprise investor at Shasta Ventures, he brings deep operational and strategic experience to early-stage companies. An immigrant from India, he is a known advocate for international founders navigating the U.S. startup ecosystem. His portfolio includes companies like Dragos, Snyk, Human Security, MindTickle, and Contentsquare. Outside the boardroom, he plays the sitar, roots for the Indian cricket team, and co-founded a rural welfare initiative in India.
Pantelis Kalogiros is a Greek-born technologist-turned-investor serving as General Partner at Cox Exponential (CX2), the early-stage AI investment vehicle of Cox Enterprises. He co-founded Fyusion in 2014, building its web infrastructure to handle 2.7 billion daily requests and embedding its 3D vision SDK into 200 million devices before the company was acquired by Cox Automotive in 2020. A self-taught dropout who obtained a U.S. green card without a bachelor's degree, Pantelis brings rare depth as both a hands-on engineer and active venture investor focused on applied AI.
Kristy Kim is the Co-founder and CEO of TomoCredit, a San Francisco-based fintech company that uses AI and alternative data to help credit-invisible Americans — immigrants, international students, and young adults — build credit without a traditional FICO score. A Korean immigrant who moved to the U.S. at age 11, Kim was denied auto loans five times despite earning a six-figure investment banking salary after graduating from UC Berkeley, simply because she had no U.S. credit history. That personal experience became the seed of TomoCredit, which has raised over $46.5M in venture funding (backed by Mastercard and Morgan Stanley), serves 4+ million customers, and generates $20M+ in annual revenue. Kim now leads the company's expansion into AI-powered financial wellness with the launch of TomoIQ.
Douglas Leone is an Italian-born American billionaire venture capitalist and former Global Managing Partner of Sequoia Capital, one of the most storied VC firms in Silicon Valley history. He joined Sequoia in 1988 after stints at Sun Microsystems, HP, and Prime Computer, rose to Managing Partner in 1996, and led the firm's global expansion into China and India. With investments spanning ServiceNow, RingCentral, Nubank, Medallia, and Wiz, Leone helped shape the modern cloud and enterprise software landscape. He stepped back from the senior operational role in 2022 but remains a general partner. As of late 2025, his net worth is estimated at $10.8 billion.
Theresia Gouw is a Chinese-Indonesian immigrant who became America's first female billionaire venture capitalist. A Brown-trained engineer turned Stanford MBA, she rose to become the first female investing partner at Accel Partners, where she helped back Facebook at a $98 million valuation in 2005. She co-founded Aspect Ventures and then Acrew Capital, managing ~$1.7 billion with a firm where 85% of employees are women or BIPOC. Beyond VC, she holds minority ownership stakes in the Buffalo Bills, Bay FC, and Golden State Warriors, and is Lead Investor and Executive Chair of an incoming Major League Volleyball franchise in Northern California.
Rashida Tlaib is a groundbreaking American politician and lawyer serving as the U.S. Representative for Michigan's 12th Congressional District since 2019. Born in Detroit to Palestinian immigrant parents as the eldest of 14 children, she made history as the first Palestinian American woman elected to Congress and one of the first two Muslim women in the House. A founding member of 'The Squad' progressive coalition, Tlaib champions working-class issues, economic justice, and human rights with authentic grassroots energy. From raising her 13 siblings while her parents worked Ford assembly lines to fighting for the unhoused, higher wages, and accountability, she brings Detroit grit and moral clarity to Washington.
Manan Mehta is the Founding Managing Partner of Unshackled Ventures, the only venture capital firm in the US built exclusively to back immigrant founders at the pre-seed stage - before product, before revenue, and often before incorporation. A first-generation American born to Indian immigrants in Sunnyvale, CA, Manan turned a personal experience of watching his H-1B co-founder get shackled by visa constraints into a $35M+ fund that has sponsored 200+ founders, completed 231+ immigration filings, and helped build a portfolio that has collectively raised $730M+ and created 1,200+ jobs. He sits on the Nasdaq board, once helped ink the $1.9B Skype acquisition as a banker, and brings to every pitch meeting the lens of someone who knows exactly what it costs to build from scratch.
Nitin Pachisia is the Founding Partner of Unshackled Ventures, the only early-stage VC firm in the U.S. exclusively focused on immigrant founders. Born in India and having navigated the U.S. immigration system himself, he co-founded Unshackled in 2014 with Manan Mehta to solve a problem he lived: talented immigrant entrepreneurs trapped by visa rules that punished risk-taking. Unshackled's model is unlike any other fund - it directly employs founders as their visa sponsor, enabling them to legally leave corporate jobs and build startups. Across three funds totaling $55M+, he has backed 80+ companies whose founders come from 35+ countries, helped create 1,100+ jobs, and maintained a 100% success rate on immigration filings.
Sriram Krishnan is the Senior White House Policy Advisor on Artificial Intelligence under President Trump, appointed January 2025. A Chennai-born engineer turned VC, he is one of few tech operators to have held senior product roles at Facebook, Snap, and Twitter simultaneously. As a General Partner at Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) from 2021 to 2024, he opened the firm's first international office in London. He co-authored the American AI Action Plan and co-hosts The Aarthi and Sriram Show podcast with his wife. Named a Time 'Architect of Artificial Intelligence' in 2025.
Desmond Lim is the co-founder and CEO of Workstream, an HR, payroll, and hiring platform built for the 70 million hourly and deskless workers in the US. Born in Singapore to a delivery driver father and part-time cleaner mother, he became the first in his family to attend university, went on to Harvard and MIT, and built a company that now serves 46 of the top 50 quick-service restaurant brands — including McDonald's, Burger King, and Dunkin' — while raising over $120M in venture funding.
Max Levchin is a Ukrainian-American tech entrepreneur and co-founder of PayPal, where he served as CTO and helped build one of the world's first large-scale digital payment systems. He later founded Slide (acquired by Google for $182M), Glow (women's health app, 25M users), and most prominently Affirm - the publicly traded buy-now-pay-later leader with $3.22B in FY2025 revenue. Levchin is also a cryptography advocate (creator of the Levchin Prize), early Yelp investor and chairman, and co-founder of SciFi VC with his wife Nellie.