10 People Who Exemplify the American Dream
5. Sergey Brin
Sergey Brin was born on August 21, 1973 in Moscow, Russia, when it was still part of the Soviet Union. Brin’s family emigrated from the U.S.S.R when he was six years old.
Brin’s father describes the harsh circumstances of being Jewish in Russia in the book, The Google Story. He was not permitted in certain course studies, which disabled him from pursuing his dream of studying astronomy. He was forced to take entrance exams in separate rooms where they were scored on a harsher scale.
His son would have more opportunity in America, where he would grow up with endless choices and eventually enroll in a computer science Ph.D. program at Stanford University. It was there that would meet Larry Page, dropout of school, and together with Page, create Google.
Not only has Google been a resource of an enormous wealth of free information, accessible to every individual’s fingertips, it has grown to such mass practical application that it has entered into the American lexicon as its own verb. Today, Brin is responsible for Google’s special projects like Google Glass and self-driving cars. He has 16% ownership of the company and is estimated to have a net worth of $24.4 billion.
