Margaret Cho (Asian Americans of Achievement)

From her first moment onstage as a teenager with her high school improv group, Margaret Cho knew that performing was her destiny. It didn't matter if she became rich or famous—she knew that being onstage and making people laugh would make her happy. At age 16, she began doing stand-up at the comedy club above her parents' bookstore in San Francisco. In 1994, Cho landed a sitcom, All-American Girl, about a rebellious daughter in a conservative Korean-American household. Though it made television history as the first sitcom to feature a mostly Asian cast, the show was short-lived, and its failure hit Cho hard. In her early twenties, she struggled with body-image issues, low self-esteem, and drug and alcohol addiction. Ultimately Cho rebuilt her confidence and decided to use her comedy as a cathartic vehicle to help others. Since then she has launched several popular comedy tours, written books, and built a huge fanbase. Read about how this brash, trail-blazing talent became, in the words of the Washington Post, "the patron saint of anyone who has ever felt like an outsider."