Tania León, the noted composer and conductor who also cofounded Dance Theatre of Harlem, never planned on emigrating to the United States. She wanted to move to Paris.
When León received the opportunity to leave Cuba on a resettlement flight to Miami in 1967, she took it, thinking she would eventually end up settling in France where she would join the Conservatoire de Paris and become a concert pianist. Instead, she moved to New York and within months met Arthur Mitchell, the New York City Ballet dancer who achieved international acclaim and integrated the art form as its first Black star.
“You cannot predict the future,” León told The Associated Press in an interview. “By a chance moment, I bumped into the man that in a way changed my life… and then he spoke to me about the creation of something that he had in mind that later on became the Dance Theatre of Harlem and then I was involved in all of this.”
“All of this” – her composing, her conducting of the New York Philharmonic, her work on Broadway – led to León being honored Thursday by the Carnegie Corp. of New York as part of its 20th class of Great Immigrants, Great Americans.
“I am just overwhelmed with this latest recognition about what I have been able to contribute because I didn’t do it with the purpose of gaining awards and things like that,” Leon said. “I think that one has to convey the gratitude for the opportunities that I have received since I arrived."
The 20 members of this year’s class of Great Immigrants, Great Americans represent a wide range of immigration journeys, but they share a desire to give back to the country that has become their home. What the Carnegie initiative celebrates is also how American immigrants have improved their country.
“For 20 years, our Great Immigrants public awareness initiative has been a reminder that many of the most influential figures in our country have been distinguished naturalized citizens, like our founder Andrew Carnegie, born in Scotland,” Carnegie President Dame Louise Richardson -- also a naturalized American citizen, born in Ireland -- said in a statement. “The U.S. is a nation of immigrants and our ongoing support of nonpartisan organizations that help establish legal pathways for citizenship continues to enrich the very fabric of American life.”
British-born Massachusetts Institute of Technology Sloan School of Management professor Simon Johnson, another honoree from this year’s Great Immigrants class, said immigrants have also enriched the American economy.
“If people come to the United States, with very few exceptions, they come because they want to work,” said Johnson, who won the 2024 Nobel memorial prize in economics with two other American immigrants, Turkish-born Daron Acemoglu and fellow Brit, James Robinson. “They want to work hard. They want to be productive. They want to improve their lives and have better futures for their kids… That dynamism we have is a big part of what’s going well in many parts of the U.S.”
Johnson said the immigrant perspective helped the team on its prize-winning study, which studied countries and found that freer, open societies are more likely to prosper. And the support that academia in the United States provides is also helpful.
“American universities have incredible opportunities -- lots of time for research, really interesting teaching, great students -- it’s an amazing combination,” he said. “I’ve been incredibly lucky because it’s a space that allows you to work hard and get lucky.”
This year’s honorees are named as immigration becomes an increasingly contentious issue. President Donald Trump’s administration is looking to add $150 billion to support his mass deportation agenda, which has drawn protests, as U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement looks to arrest 3,000 people in the country illegally each day.
Maria Teresa Kumar, president and CEO of the civic engagement nonprofit Voto Latino and another of Carnegie’s 2024 honorees, said the anti-immigration sentiment is painful on so many levels.
“A multicultural America is our secret superpower,” said Kumar, who emigrated from Colombia with her family when she was four years old. “There are plenty of people in foreign interference that try to divide our country around race and status because they know that multiculturally, when human capital is what’s going to determine the 21st Century, we are truly unstoppable… It’s that diversity and value of thought that makes us really strong. And what’s happening right now seems like we are impeding our progress because we’re not seeing the bigger picture.”
Kumar and Voto Latino have been outspoken with their criticism of the Trump administration and have directed some of their resources toward keeping immigrants informed of their rights and offering advice to deal with ICE raids.
Geri Mannion, managing director of Carnegie’s Strengthening U.S. Democracy Program, which oversees the Great Immigrants, Great American awards and other civic participation initiatives, said they will continue handing out the awards because immigrants help the United States on multiple levels.
Carnegie is also marking the 20th anniversary with a free comic book that celebrates the lives of previous honorees, including Rock and Roll Hall of Famer David Byrne, Peabody Award-winning comedian Mo Amer, and Jim Lee, the chief creative officer of the DC comics universe. The comic will also be used by the National Council of Teachers of English to develop lesson plans and other educational resources.
“In other countries, you could be there three generations, but you might be seen still seen as the other,” she said. “In the U.S., you’re considered American the moment you take that oath. And nobody thinks twice about it.”
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Carnegie Corp. of New York’s 2025 Class of Great Immigrants, Great Americans is: Calendly founder and CEO, Tope Awotona, originally from Nigeria; Moungi Bawendi, Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor of chemistry (France); Helen M. Blau, Director of the Baxter Laboratory for Stem Cell Biology and Stanford University professor (England); Roger Cohen, New York Times journalist and Paris Bureau Chief (England); Akiko Iwasaki, Yale University School of Medicine professor of Immunobiology, Dermatology, and Epidemiology (Japan); comedian/actor Maz Jobrani (Iran); MIT Sloan School of Management entrepreneurship professor Simon Johnson (England); Kynisca CEO Michele Kang, owner of the Washington Spirit (South Korea); Flex-N-Gate CEO Shahid Khan (Pakistan); AAPI Equity Alliance executive director Manjusha P. Kulkarni (India); Voto Latino CEO María Teresa Kumar (Colombia); composer/conductor Tania León (Cuba); Northwell Health vice president Sandra Leisa Lindsay (Jamaica); Rockefeller University professor and Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator Luciano Marraffini (Argentina); Yale professor of astronomy and physics Priyamvada Natarajan (India); comedian/artist Kareem Rahma (Egypt); California U.S. Rep. Raúl Ruiz (Mexico); Manoochehr Sadeghi, grand master of the santur, the Persian dulcimer (Iran); former prima ballerina Yuan Yuan Tan, of the San Francisco Ballet (China); and Avi Wigderson, mathematics professor at the Institute for Advanced Study (Israel).
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FILE - Composer and conductor Tania León arrives to attend the Kennedy Center honorees reception at the White House in Washington, Dec. 4, 2022. (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta, File)
FILE - Maria Teresa Kumar, president and CEO of Voto Latino, speaks during the Democratic National Convention, Aug. 21, 2024, in Chicago. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite, File)
FILE - Economist Simon Johnson poses for a photograph after jointly winning the Nobel memorial prize in economics, at his home in Washington, Oct. 14, 2024. (AP Photo/Ben Curtis, File)
