Thuan Pham

“When we reached the US as refugees, we had to start our lives over with empty hands, but it was the hope and promise of the American Dream that kept us going," Uber CTO Thuan Pham wrote in a 2017 post published on the company’s website. In a perilous journey, Pham fled war-torn Vietnam at the age of 10 with his mother and brother in a boat crammed with hundreds of people. After spending close to a year in an Indonesian refugee camp, the family finally made it to the U.S., where Pham went on to earn an M.S. in electrical engineering and computer science from MIT. Since joining Uber in 2013, he has built its engineering group from 40 engineers to more than 2,000 and the company's technology has gone from handling 30,000 trips a day to millions. Before joining Uber, Pham held engineering leadership positions at technology companies including VMWare, Westbridge and Doubleclick. Updated 2018