Explore AAPI Heritage: Names & Faces

Tammy Duckworth became the first Thai American woman elected to Congress and the first U.S. senator to give birth while in office.

View her letter to her younger self.

In the 1950s, an Oregon farmer started an adoption agency that brought Korean children to the United States to be adopted by American families, eventually resulting in the adoption of over 150,000 Korean children. Oversights during the adoption process have led to some of these adoptees being deported back to Korea as adults. This is the story of one of them. 

There are many notable scientists from the AAPI community. Learn more about the first woman of Indian descent to go into space and many others compiled into this list by the SETI Institute. 

Harvard University student, Amanda Guyen, the daughter of Vietnamese refugees, attempted to access information on her rights as the survivor of a sexual assault, and she realized that there were no consistent rules, rights and protections for victims of sexual violence.

Her Sexual Assault Survivors’ Rights Act of 2016 provides survivors with certain guarantees, including the right to a rape kit procedure at no cost, as well as the requirement that kits be preserved for 20 years. Nguyen was nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize in 2019, and is the founder and CEO of Rise, a coalition that advocates for survivors’ rights.

Ai-jen Poo is the co-founder and Executive Director of the National Domestic Workers Alliance. This group works to bring quality work, dignity and fairness to the growing numbers of workers who care and clean in our homes, the majority of whom are immigrants and women of color. Read about her, and her organization, in the article, "Care and Vision: The Transformative Feminism of Ai-jen Poo."

Anna May Wong will become the first Asian American to be on U.S. currency.

Tony Finau is of Tongan and American Samoan decent and the first person of such ancestry to play on the PGA Tour.