Immigrant Entrepreneurs

Immigrant Entrepreneur: Magie Cook

Magie was born in an orphanage where she spent 18 years of suffering. She had 68 brothers and sisters at the orphanage and at times she had to hunt for her food with her own bare hands because there was no food at the orphanage. 

Holidays were celebrated very seldomly, if they were celebrated at all. The shoes that they wore to school were hand made by her "parents". In this episode she explains why she doesn't call her parents, "parents" and how she found basketball for a means of escaping the orphanage. 

Magie started her salsa company all by accident, and later sold it for $231M. 

Magie is an internationally recognized speaker and expert in the field of business and personal development and has been featured on numerous publications, magazines, and television networks such as Daystar TV, Bloomberg TV’s “The American Dream” and many more. 

She has received many awards, including, being inducted into the Hall of Fame at the University of Charleston and received a Nobel Entrepreneur Prize in Mexico. She’s worked with many Fortune 100 and 500 companies, as well as A-listers including professional athletes, influencers, and thought leaders.

Immigrant Entrepreneur: Lauren Cohen

Although Lauren is Canadian, her immigration process was still lengthy and she had to fight for a better visa status. Lauren's passion for immigration law came after her then-husband was deported after their honeymoon to Thailand. 

She was confused, lost and devasted. She knew that there were other people fighting the same battles and she went looking for better answers. 

Lauren is an immigration lawyer in both countries and is the only true concierge ancillary service provider oriented to helping foreign nationals secure their and renew their desired visas. 

Lauren has also published a book, Finding Your Silver Lining in the Business Immigration Process, and has gotten tons of amazing reviews! 

She's also a sought out speaker that has taken the stage in various capacities. 

Immigrant Entrepreneur: Prateek Joshi

Prateek's interest in machine learning/artificial intelligence came early on when he was growing up in India. Since there was lack of clean water where he grew up, he knew that there had to be a solution for this.

Every so often their family had to go to a place to get drinking water and do it over and over when supply was getting low. He started learning about water sources and machine learning early on and he grew such a passion for it.

When he came to USA at 27 years old to study Computer Vision on his Master's program he knew this was only a beginning to his amazing journey.

He's an author of 13 books all related to Python, machine learning and AI. He's also taken the stage on TedX and has been featured on Forbes, 30 under 30 list.

Prateek is a young immigrant entrepreneur who manages his company of 35 employees and he's thriving.

In this episode he drops a lot of invaluable advice on entrepreneurship, growing his business, how it all started and raising capital.

Kate is an immigration lawyer who does an amazing job by helping and serving the immigrants of America. Immigration is an international law which means that she can help anyone, regardless of their location in America. 

Kate provides some tools on how to make the immigration process smoother, why the immigration process takes forever, and she goes over some of the mistakes that she normally sees when reviewing applications and assisting immigrants through the citizenship process. 

Kate has appeared on news outlets such as the BBC, MSNBC, the New York Times, and National Public Radio as an immigration expert and she regularly speaks at legal education seminars for the American Immigration Lawyers Association, the State Bar of Texas, and the Austin Bar Association, as well as to community groups such as churches and schools.

Immigrant Entrepreneur: Marie Capita

Marie immigrated from Haiti when she was very young. She started her entrepreneurship journey after getting her law degree and starting her own practice with a business partner. Her entrepreneurial career didn't end there. 

She left the practice and started a bakery business with her husband. Since they went through a divorce, she decided to give that up as well. 

Although she got a County job and worked a desk job, she wasn't giving up on her entrepreneurial spirits. It was when she had a near death experience when she realized she wanted to do more in this life and make a difference. 

That's when Taste of Immokalee was born. 

Immigrant Entrepreneur: Spoorthi Kumar

Spoorthi is a native born, but she left to India with her family at 5 years old. She eventually came back to the States to study I.T. but she didn't like her job out of college. She ended up quitting her corporate job and wanted something more for her life. 

She had absolutely no plans, no plan A, no plan B but she went searching for it. In fact, she didn't even have any side hustle income coming in. 

Starting a coffee shop with her business partner was something, well, very spontaneous. She was 23 years old and she had so much energy and fire to figure it all out. 

Both Spoorthi and her business partner didn't have any experience running a business, or any experience even being a barista. You would think, that would be the first thing that they would do.. but that was definitely not their strategy! 

The coffee shop, Hidden Grounds, now has 5 locations and 30 employees! 

Immigrant Entrepreneur: Liubov Lomonosova

Liubov grew up with humble beginnings. Living in Ukraine, her family couldn't afford to live in a house. In fact, living in a house was considered a luxury, so they lived in a very small apartment complex. 

While she never imagined living in United States, she immigrated at 30 years old when her husband was moved out here for work. They barely knew anyone and started their lives fresh. She had to take English classes, and thought that getting a job will be very easy. Unfortunately she came to a few roadblocks and had to settle for a shoe store company. 

While she was going through her weight loss journey, she realized that she can actually become a running coach and teach people what she knew about being a runner. Although her experience in Ukraine was in engineering her entrepreneurship lead her to become an amazing running coach.

Immigrant Entrepreneur: Alina Trigub

Alina grew up in Ukraine when anti-semitism groups were complete widespread. As a Jewish she and her mom feared for their lives. It was out of pure safety that they realized they had to move out to a better place and that's when they immigrated to United States. 

Alina had several jobs out of college, but her side gig really only started out of curiosity. She started researching and learning everything there was about real estate syndication. Alina found that not a lot of people knew about syndication so Samo Financial was born to teach people and help them through financial wealth.

Something happened to her position at her last job and that's when her entrepreneurial journey kicked into full gear. 

She drops in a lot of wisdom in this episode about immigrant entrepreneurship and I learned so much from her journey!

Immigrant Entrepreneur: Amine Rahal

Amine immigrated from North Africa, Algeria at the age of 12 years old with his family to Canada. They came initially because his parents wanted to relocate to another city where French was spoken. His parents came to give their kids better opportunities and a better life. 

Amine was always interested in software since he was a young boy. All because, back in Africa they had a computer when they were growing up. So he naturally gravitated towards anything related to computers or software development. 

Amine never imagined that he was going to become an entrepreneur, so when he was fired from his job something inside of him told him that he should start a side hustle. His journey took him to New York, and then to China and that's where he turned his side hustle into his full time entrepreneurial venture. 

Amine is also an author of the book: Immigrant Hustle. This book featured 50 amazing immigrants from all over the world and shares their stories and experiences to entrepreneurship. 

Immigrant Entrepreneur: Veronica Moya

Veronica had many odd jobs when she came to the United States at 21 years old. She worked at different cafe shops, as an au pair, at a health club but during this time she was always auditioning. Her dream was to become and actor and that's what she wanted to do in New York. 

Even after being fired from several jobs, she was still persistent to find her passions. 

Her entrepreneurial drive really kicked in when she was getting married. She found out that she needed a wedding officiant. After discovering that they made $500 per wedding she told herself that she can do it too!

Without any experience in the wedding industry, without even being a wedding planner she went full force and decided that she will figure it all out. 

During COVID in 2020 she hosted 500+ weddings alone, in one year!!