The Andrew Carnegie Foundation has revealed its 2026 class of “Great Immigrants, Great Americans” honorees, a group that includes Citi CEO Jane Fraser, Pulitzer Prize-winning authors Hernan Diaz and Cristina Rivera Garza, and fashion designer Gabriela Hearst. The foundation — which recently changed its name from the Carnegie Corporation of New York to better reflect its nonprofit identity and its ties to famed Scottish immigrant and industrialist Andrew Carnegie — made the announcement Tuesday, as immigration advocates voiced concerns about the direction of U.S. immigration policy following last week’s Supreme Court decisions.
Foundation President Dame Louise Richardson said the awards program, which launched in 2005, has never been intended as a political statement. Still, she acknowledged the timing carries weight.
“We’re not articulating it in response to this moment,” Richardson told The Associated Press. “But it seems especially important at this moment that we celebrate immigrants and their contributions and also that we present a view of immigrants different from the ones so often portrayed in the media.”
The broader immigration debate continues to play out at the highest levels of government. President Donald Trump’s administration is actively working to expand immigration enforcement while reducing the number of legal immigrants and asylum seekers allowed into the country. Meanwhile, Pope Leo XIV offered a contrasting perspective earlier this month during a visit to a site in Spain once at the center of the European migration crisis, declaring, “Human dignity has no passport and does not lose its value when crossing a border.”
Richardson — a naturalized U.S. citizen originally from Ireland — said the conversation around immigration has grown increasingly tense, particularly regarding legal immigration and skilled worker visas.
“That just strikes me as an act of self-harm on a national level,” she said, “because so many of these people are the engines of the economy.”
Among the honorees is Dr. Iman Abuzeid, co-founder and CEO of Incredible Health, an artificial intelligence-powered platform focused on healthcare careers. Originally from Sudan and now based in San Francisco, Abuzeid said the recognition feels like a tribute not just to her own journey, but to all those who supported her along the way.
“And if my story makes it feel like it’s more possible for someone else, then that’s probably the part that I care about the most,” she said.
Abuzeid said she deliberately chose the United States as her destination after living in Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and completing medical school in England.
“It is the best country for what I’m trying to do,” she said. “I think if you’re ambitious and you’re willing to work hard and you’ve got some skills, it is probably the best country in the world for you.”
She said her experience as an immigrant gave her the courage to take risks and trust in her own abilities. That perspective has also shaped how she built Incredible Health, which serves both employers seeking healthcare workers and the workers themselves — roughly 20% of whom are immigrants. Her background, she said, has made her more sensitive to issues of bias in the workplace.
“I think being from Sudan does make me a little bit more attuned to topics like bias and diversity,” Abuzeid said. “Because we’re operating a marketplace at scale, we can see these patterns in our data where workers of certain last names were seeing bias against them. … So when we removed that, we were able to improve that part of the marketplace.”
Another honoree, Cristian Măcelaru, conductor of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra and a native of Romania, described immigration as a mutual opportunity — one that benefits both the immigrant and the country welcoming them.
“This is an opportunity we should hold dear,” he said. “It really makes for a unique kind of country.”
Măcelaru moved to Michigan at age 16 to study music at Interlochen Arts Academy. He said the immigrant experience never fully fades, even as one builds a new life.
“I’ve met so many incredible people that were supportive of my arrival to the United States and embracing of who I was,” he said. “But, at the same time, there is that nostalgia for what you’ve left behind that accompanies you on a daily basis. … The immigrant experience never leaves you.”
Măcelaru, who led the Orchestre National de France during the opening ceremony of the 2024 Paris Olympics — watched by more than a billion people worldwide — said cultural strength comes from embracing what others bring to the table.
“I think all of us actually love the cultures of different places,” he said. “It doesn’t matter where we are on the planet, you end up loving music that is from a different place. You end up loving food that is from a different country.”
Also honored is Gregory Nagy, Harvard University’s Francis Jones Professor of Classical Greek Literature and a professor of Comparative Literature. A native of Hungary, Nagy emigrated with his family as a child after World War II, first settling in Canada before moving to the United States when his father was invited to join Indiana University as a professor of classical piano.
“To have an influx of new cultures and new ways of looking at things — that variety is the human fabric,” Nagy said. “I’m just awestruck by how important the melting pot is.”
Nagy spent his formative years in Bloomington, Indiana, and takes pride in calling himself “a friendly Midwesterner.” His course on “The Ancient Greek Hero” has been taught for more than 50 years and is currently the longest-running class at Harvard. He draws on Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard’s concept of repetition — the idea that even repeating something changes it — to illustrate how cultures evolve through new influences.
He noted that the ancient Greek understanding of heroism more closely resembles modern comic book heroes than the idealized figures many Americans tend to admire. That evolution, he said, is driven by younger generations, much like the social changes that followed the election of Péter Magyar as Hungary’s prime minister in April.
“I was very fortunate to become an immigrant,” Nagy said. “And I was lucky enough to achieve puberty in Indiana, so that Americanizes you very well.”
