The United States is preparing to mark the 250th anniversary of its independence with the announcement of the 2026 Great Immigrants, Great Americans honourees. This year’s class includes 25 naturalised U.S. citizens from 21 countries, recognised by the Carnegie Corporation of New York for their outstanding contributions to American society. 

Among them are four Indian-origin leaders whose achievements in technology, medicine, psychology, and biotechnology reflect the growing influence of the Indian diaspora in the United States and its role in driving innovation, research, and global leadership.

Reshma Kewalramani  

Reshma Kewalramani was born in Mumbai before moving to the United States with her family at the age of 11. She completed a combined undergraduate and medical degree at Boston University and started her career as a transplant nephrologist. Her transition into the biotechnology industry began in 2004. She joined Vertex Pharmaceuticals in 2017 and became its Chief Executive Officer and President in 2020.

Kewalramani became the first woman to lead a major publicly traded biotechnology company. During her leadership, Vertex advanced treatments for cystic fibrosis and helped bring the first CRISPR-based gene-editing therapy for sickle cell disease to receive approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. 

Sanjiv Chopra  

Sanjiv Chopra was born in India on September 9, 1949. Inspired by his physician father, he pursued medicine at All India Institute of Medical Sciences. In 1972, he moved to the United States for advanced medical training. Over the following decades, he established himself as a respected physician, educator, and researcher.

Chopra has served on the faculty of Harvard Medical School for more than four decades. He has also held important clinical and teaching roles at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center.

Mahzarin Banaji 

Mahzarin R. Banaji was born into a Parsi family in 1956 and spent her childhood in Telangana, India. She later moved to the United States to study psychology and earned her doctorate from The Ohio State University. 

Banaji is now a professor at Harvard University. She is widely known for studying implicit bias and unconscious decision-making. In 1998, she and psychologist Anthony Greenwald developed the Implicit Association Test (IAT). Millions of people around the world have used the assessment to better understand unconscious attitudes related to race, gender, and other social issues.

Nikesh Arora 

Nikesh Arora was born on February 9, 1968, in Ghaziabad, Uttar Pradesh. He grew up in a family with strong military values, as his father served in the Indian Air Force. He studied at the Air Force School before earning an Electrical Engineering degree from the Indian Institute of Technology (BHU), Varanasi in 1989. He later completed an MBA at Northeastern University in the United States.

His career began with roles at Wipro and Deutsche Telekom. He later spent nearly ten years at Google, where he held senior leadership positions in global sales and business operations. Before joining Palo Alto Networks in 2018, Arora served as President and Chief Operating Officer of SoftBank Group. Today, he is recognized as one of the world’s leading technology executives.

Previous Honorees from the Indian-American Community 

Previous honorees include Nobel laureate Abhijit Banerjee, public health expert Ashish Kumar Jha, economist Gita Gopinath, NASA researcher Kamlesh Lulla, former U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, Shantanu Narayen, and Sundar Pichai.

The continued success of these Indian-origin leaders also serves as an inspiration for aspiring professionals around the world.

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