Lisa Vedernikova Khanna

Lisa Vedernikova Khanna is a community and business leader who is the living embodiment of the American Dream. Her mom risked everything to flee Soviet Russia in hopes that America would be different. Freer. Fairer. Her mom spent years undocumented, building a small business and raising Lisa on her own. In just one generation, Lisa worked her way out of poverty, proving how access to opportunity, hard work, and a strong community can change a life’s trajectory.

Life in America wasn’t easy for Lisa or her mom. They were evicted when Lisa was five. She didn’t learn English until she started public school at age six. When Lisa was a teenager, she had to file bankruptcy on her mom’s behalf because Lisa was the only one who could navigate the system well enough to do it. She relied on free school lunches to get by and had Medicaid for healthcare, while her mom had no access to healthcare at all. But they both worked hard to make it in America. Lisa’s mom deeply believed in the American Dream and instilled in Lisa the values of hard work, integrity, and grit, bringing her along to help clean houses to make ends meet. By age 13, Lisa was working three jobs at once - from making sandwiches at a gas station deli to working at a card shop - and she continued holding up to three jobs at a time through college.