“I dreamed of an international career, but the American and English record companies weren’t going to come to Indonesia looking for a new talent, when there is so much available in their own countries. So, I had to bring my talent to the West.”-says Anggun.

The talented singer, Anggun Cipta Sasmi, was born in Indonesia. Her name means “A grace born out of a dream” which is definitely a true statement about this remarkable singer.
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Tags: anggun cipta sasmi, indonesia, singer

Masi Oka became famous by playing Hiro Nakamura, a fan favorite character on the NBC hit show “Heroes.” Masi’s character is a comic-book-loving optimist who discovers he has the ability to manipulate time and space.

“When I was a kid, I kept saying that I wanted to win Oscars in the technical and creative fields, to show the world that the human brain has two sides.” Masi Oka has been nominated for a Golden Globe and Emmy Award.
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Tags: actor, coder, hero, heroes, Masi Oka, risk-taker

Vikram Pandit is CEO of Citigroup, the world’s largest bank, and employs 358,000 people around the world in 100 countries. He was formerly President and COO at Morgan Stanley from 2000 to 2005. He is a former board member of the NASDAQ.

Vikram was born in India to a moderately affluent family. He moved to the US to attend Columbia University where he received a BS (electrical engineering), MS (electrical engineering), MBA, and Ph.D. in finance. Vikram is also a trustee at Columbia University.

After obtaining his multiple degrees in succession, Vikram became a professor at Indiana University Bloomington before joining Morgan Stanley’s institutional securities division. He was responsible for building their prime brokerage services. Afterward, he started his own hedge fund called “Old Lane,” which was later purchased by Citigroup, at which point Vikram was offered a job. When he was appointed to CEO, his father was quoted as saying,

“He was a brilliant boy. In school, he always stood first in his class. He is very astute and focused. I saw him rise. Vikram has stood to my expectations.”

Got to love them Asian parents!
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Tags: Asian heroes, BS-MS-MBA-PhD, CEO Of Citigroup, deeply religious, former professor, Qualified professional engineer, Vikram Pandit

Jerry Yang is co-founder and CEO of Yahoo! Inc. He is worth an estimated US$2.3 billion and ranked 524th among the richest people in the world. Mastering the English language in only three years during his high school years, Jerry was soon placed in an AP English class. He went on to Stanford University where he graduated with a B.S. and M.S. degree in electrical engineering.

Jerry has been a leading force in the Internet media industry for as long as anyone can remember. He has built Yahoo! into a destination network of sites that attracts 3.4 billion views per day. Yahoo! remains the world’s most highly trafficked website–beating Google–and is one of the world’s most recognized brands.

Yahoo was originally started in 1994 when Jerry was a PhD student. He jokes, “Really, we’d do anything to keep from working on our theses.”

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Tags: " Jerry Yang, $26bn Yahoo's "Yet Another Highly Officious Oracle, Asian heroes, entrepreneur, Internet icon, technologist, Yahoo's Jerry Yang

Ellison S. Onizuka made the ultimate sacrifice and lost his life in service to his nation and the international space community on January 28, 1986 at 39 years of age.

Ellison was 15 where the Mercury mission put an American astronaut in space for the first time. His mother said,

Ellison always had it in his mind to become an astronaut but was too embarrassed to tell anyone [...] When he was growing up, there were no Asian astronauts, no black astronauts, just white ones. His dream seemed too big.

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Tags: Anything is possible: U.S. Air Force Colonel, Asian heroes, Asian Heroes and Role Models, Astronaut Ellison Onizuka, Ellison Onizuka

Ever wonder how your computer is able to remember what you type? Well, the underlying technology was developed by Dr. An Wang, who co-invented the pulse transfer controlling device with Harvard classmate Way-Dong Woo. His company, Wang Laboratories, helped a clumsy new technology evolve into useful calculating machines and word processors, creating impetus for the personal computing revolution.

For this and other inventions, An was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame which only recognizes an elite group including Edison, Pasteur and Bell.
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Tags: Asian heroes, Businessman, co-founder of Wang Laboratories, Dr. An Wang, inventor of computer memory

When he was only 28, Sabeer Bhatia got the call every Silicon Valley
entrepreneur dreams of: Bill Gates wants to buy your company. At every stop, Sabeer’s guide helpfully pointed out the vastness of the Microsoft empire. The procession ground on until it reached Gates’s office. Sabeer was ushered in.

Bill liked his firm.

He hoped they could work together. He wished him well. Sabeer was ushered out and into a conference room with 12 Microsoft negotiators.” Sabeer recalls, “Very intimidating.” Microsoft’s determined dozen put an offer on the table: Take it or leave it, $160 million.

Sabeer said, “I’ll get back to you.” He later walked away with $400 million.
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Tags: City builder, Hotmail innovator, Sabeer Bhatia

India will send their first mission to the Moon via the Chandrayaan-1 in mid-October. This is an impressive mission for a small space agency, all lead by Madhavan Nair, who we’ve lovingly dubbed, “Mr. Rocket Man.”

Madhavan, chairman  of Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO), is a leading technologist in rocket systems and especially in the development of multi-stage satellite launch vehicles. (yes, it is a mouthful.)

Madhavan’s main focus has always been to bring the benefits of space technology to  national development, specially targeting the needs of the rural and poor sections of the society.

In the international arena, Madhavan has led the Indian delegations for cooperation with French, Russian, Brazilian, and Israeli space agencies.

We hope you learn more about Madhavan!

Source

Image from: http://www.daylife.com/photo/07GvaJTgNw0xs
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G._Madhavan_Nair
http://www.isro.org/mnair/index.htm
http://www.isro.org/mnair/biodata_mnair.htm

Tags: Asian heroes, Chandrayaan-1, Indian Space Research Organization, Madhavan Nair, Mr. Rocket Man

Youtube was truly groundbreaking because before its launch, there were few simple methods to post videos online. Few would contest that Youtube has fundamentally changed the way folks consume information online.

In January 2008 alone, nearly 79 million users had made over 3 billion video views.

Steve Shih Chen, Chad Hurley and Jawed Karim helped co-found Youtube in mid-February 2005. In October 2006, Google Inc. announced that it had reached a deal to acquire the company for $1.65 billion in Google stock. The acquisition, the biggest in Google’s history, put the Internet search giant in the leading position in the burgeoning world of online video. The Google shares that Steve received were worth $350 million at Google’s Oct. 30, 2007 closing stock price. That only took a year and 8 months!!

Steve was also an early employee at Facebook, although he left after several months to start YouTube. In June 2006, he was named by Business 2.0 as one of the “The 50 people who matter now” in business.

Source

http://tech.blorge.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/11/youtube.jpg

http://money.cnn.com/2006/06/21/technology/50whomatter.biz2/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/YouTube

Tags: Asian heroes, Steve Chen, technologist, Youtube co-founder