Ronny Chieng has become Hollywood’s go-to comedic talent whose credits across stand-up, film, and television now include some of the industry’s biggest franchises.

Currently, Chieng is balancing his role as a senior correspondent on Comedy Central’s The Daily Show with a high-profile co-headlining tour alongside Hasan Minhaj.  Titled Hasan Hates Ronny | Ronny Hates Hasan, the 2025–2026 “debate to the death” tour features the two comics on stage simultaneously airing grievances. 

This follows the success of his third Netflix special, Love to Hate It, which was released in 2024 and named the New York Times Comedy Special of the Year.  He previously released two other specials – 2019’s Asian Comedian Destroys America! and 2022’s Speakeasy.

Chieng was cast in Hulu’s 2025 revival of the longstanding franchise King of the Hill as the voice of the Laotian neighbor Kahn.  The move was part of the producers’ commitment to authentic casting, replacing white actor Toby Huss – who inherited the role of Dale.

In 2024 he starred all 10 episodes of the drama series Interior Chinatown and had a voice role in the DreamWorks hit Kung Fu Panda 4.  

He previously added to his film credits with supporting roles in 2023’s Joy Ride, 2022’s viral horror-comedy M3GAN, and 2021’s Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, which grossed $432 million.

These followed his 2018 breakthrough into the American mainstream as the status-obsessed Eddie Cheng in the blockbuster Crazy Rich Asians.

Before his success in the US, Chieng built his foundation in Australia.  He first began performing stand-up while studying in Melbourne and gained regional fame before moving to New York City in 2015 to join The Daily Show.  

The Malaysian-born star had a multicultural upbringing raised between New Hampshire and Singapore.  Before pivoting to comedy full-time, he solidified his legal credentials with a 2010 bachelor of laws and a 2012 master’s degree from Australian institutions.  In April 2025, Chieng officially completed the process of obtaining American citizenship.

Lisa Ling has become one of the most respected journalists in the United States by building a career covering the stories other people were too afraid to tell.

She was born in Sacramento to Chinese and Taiwanese immigrants and was primarily raised by her father after her parent’s divorce. Living in a single parent household with a younger sister forced her to become independent early and like other Asian American kids, she felt like didn’t fully belong in her community. This feeling is what would later become her greatest strength.

When Ling was 16, she began gaining experience hosting a teen news program and by the time she was 18, she already had a gig secured at Channel One News as one of their youngest reporters. Among her roles here, she was assigned to report from warzones in Iraq and Afghanistan and even won several awards for her journalism skills.

In 1999, Ling beat out 12,000 other auditionees looking to score the role as co-host on The View and while the platform largely increased her fanbase, she decided it wasn’t enough after nearly four years. She went back to what she did best, international reporting. In 2005, Ling accepted an offer with National Geographic. During her time here, she covered the drug war in Colombia, investigated the MS-13 gang, documented prison culture in the U.S, and traveled to North Korea for a special “Inside North Korea” documentary.

Lisa Ling later became a correspondent for The Oprah Winfrey Show where she uncovered global tragedies such as bride burning in India and child trafficking in Ghana. Despite all of the horrific stories Ling covered, one of the scariest moments in her life didn’t happen on air. In 2009, her younger sister and fellow journalist, Laura Ling, was captured by North Korean soldiers while reporting near the China-North Korea border. Laura Ling and her colleague were sentenced to 12 years of hard labor and from there, Lisa Ling went from talking about global crises to experiencing one herself.

For months, Lisa Ling worked behind the scenes, doing everything she could to bring her sister home. The story became international and drew attention to the dangers that journalists face in the field. Laura Ling was finally released after 140 days after a high-profile mission led by former President Bill Clinton. This experience fully changed Lisa’s life giving her a much deeper understanding of the human cost behind the stories she had covered throughout her career.

More recently in 2019 Lisa announced a partnership with HBO Max where she is currently working on a series titled Birth, Wedding, Funeral. In 2022 she and HBO released a six-part documentary called Take Out, which explores the world of Asian America’s takeout restaurants and spotlights those who keep them running.

Today Lisa Ling is still considered one of the most impressive and respected voices in journalism, not because she reported alarming global tragedies, but because she made the world care about them and fully understand the realities.

There’s a new generation of Asian American entrepreneurs who are reshaping the way Asian food is seen in the United States. David Zhao is one of them and he is quietly building one of the fastest-growing Asian restaurant groups in the country.

He was born in Shanghai and immigrated to the United States when he was 12 years old. Zhao grew up like most immigrant kids who were navigating two different worlds, but rather than following a traditional route, he had another vision. When he was just 13, Zhao launched a digital agency, his very first company, and by the time he was enrolled in The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, he was already fairly experienced in the entrepreneurship world.

While studying business, Zhao was taking on freelance jobs, which is how he came across the restaurant industry and the thought of something much bigger. When Zhao was 20, he met his business partner, Haibin Yang and together they noticed that Asian food in America was often seen as cheap takeout food or just simply low-end.

With this problem in mind, Zhao and Yang wanted to change that, so they opened an all-you-can-eat Mongolian hot pot restaurant, Chubby Cattle, in 2015 in Las Vegas. Chubby Cattle is nothing like your average hot pot. They used high quality ingredients, premium cuts of meat, and a modern, tech forward experience, making it completely stand out from other spots.

Since Chubby Cattle was a success, Zhao and Yang were able to expand the brand into Chubby Group, which now operates 20 different locations in the United States with other concepts like The X Pot and Mikiya Wagyu Shabu House. Chubby Group’s locations did exceptionally well in Las Vegas especially since they offer deluxe experiences like all-you-can-eat Wagyu and fancy table presentations that soften the line between food and entertainment.

Chubby Group’s numbers match Zhao’s original vision. Yahoo Finance reported in 2025 that Chubby Group’s valuation has now been brought to around $300 million after raising $45 million in equity investments. This will fund the next 35 locations. Zhao believed Asian cuisine belonged at the top of the market and now at 29 years old, he has proved that with Chubby Group. Today the company remains on the path of becoming one of the first major Asian American-owned restaurant empires in the United States.

There’s a new skincare ingredient that has blown up in Korea and is making its way to skincare shelves in America and it’s something you may not expect. It’s salmon DNA or PDRN. 

PDRN is short for polydeoxyribonucleotide, salmon DNA that’s most commonly extracted and purified from salmon sperm. But this is not just another skincare trend, its science backed. PDRN was first discovered in the early 1980s in Italy and was used to treat burns and other stubborn wounds. 

Enter Koreans in the mid-2000s. Korean dermatologists and doctors began to experiment with PDRN in skincare. They were able to recognize that PDRN has regenerative properties that can be applied to the skin to help with procedure recoveries, repairing acne scars, and boosting collagen production. 

The way PDRN works is by activating what’s called the adenosine A2A receptor, which is basically a pathway in our bodies that tells the skin to repair and regenerate itself. Once that signal is triggered, it stimulates fibroblasts which are the cells responsible for producing collagen. PDRN also promotes angiogenesis, the formation of new blood vessels that helps with circulation in the skin. Lastly, PDRN reduces inflammation, making it a popular choice for calming acne-prone skin. 

Using PDRN in your skincare routine can overall result in better texture and improved elasticity and that is exactly why it became such a hit in South Korea. PDRN fits right into the K-beauty philosophy that focuses on repairing the skin at a deeper level. 

While the most dramatic results come from injectable PDRN treatments done in clinics, many brands incorporate it in topical skincare and now, it’s making its way to global shelves. So if you see PDRN listed in your skincare, just know it’s not another viral trend, but a bigger step toward regenerative skincare.

Kevin Zhang is a General Partner of Upfront Ventures, a Los Angeles-based VC firm with over $2B in assets under management.

He brings a structured approach to early-stage investing, managing substantial capital deployments across the firm’s funds, primarily focusing on healthcare technology and interactive media.

Zhang has spearheaded several notable deals in the gaming and developer tool sectors. In 2023 Upfront invested $7.6M into the serverless multiplayer game hosting platform Hathora.  The following year Zhang led a nearly $10 million combined investment in GlassFlow, a streaming infrastructure for python developers, and the AI-infused dev environment platform Daytona.

Before his tenure at Upfront Ventures, Zhang got his start in 2009 at the healthcare software firm Verisk Health as a business analyst for two years and then moved on to The Boston Consulting Group as an associate providing strategic insights for clients in technology, healthcare and industrial fields.

Zhang graduated from Harvard with a bachelor’s in biology.

American stars have a long history of making massive waves in Chinese basketball.  Most famously, former NBA All-Star Stephon Marbury became a living legend in the Chinese Basketball Association, winning three championships with the Beijing Ducks and earning both a statue and a museum in his honor.  Tracy McGrady and Gilbert Arenas also drew massive crowds, proving that the CBA eagerly embraces American star power.

International eyes are on the CBA once again after the Nanjing Monkey Kings latest signing – not a veteran NBA star, but rapper J. Cole.  While he is known for multi-platinum masterpieces like 2014 Forest Hills Drive and a Grammy wins for “A Lot” and “All My Life,” he’s had lifelong hoop dreams.

Before choosing to pursue music, 6’3” rapper/shooting guard walked on at St. John’s and later turned heads at the 2012 NBA Celebrity All-Star Game by throwing down an alley-oop with the assist coming from Kevin Hart.  In 2021 Jermaine Cole joined the Patriots BBC in the Basketball Africa League, suiting up for 3 games, averaging 1.7 points per game.  The following year he suited up during four games for the Canadian Elite Basketball League’s Scarborough Shooting Stars. He averaged 2.4 points over four games.

Though the CBA awards a domestic and international MVP, J. Cole fans obviously should not expect the now 41-year-old to mirror Starbury’s MVP-level dominance.  With likely another short stint on the horizon, hip-hop heads can appreciate Cole looking to scratch a last itch and bringing global eyes to the Monkey Kings.

Cole’s signing notably follows the February release of his highly anticipated seventh studio album, The Fall Off, which debuted at number 1 on the Billboard 200.

 Historically, Asian representation in Hollywood has always been limited, but in the last decade, Olivia Munn has built her acting career while also navigating her identity as a mixed-race Asian American woman.

She was born in Oklahoma City in 1980 to an American father and her Vietnamese-born Chinese mother who fled to the United States after the Vietnam War. Munn’s childhood was mostly spent in Tokyo, due to her mother remarrying a member of the U.S. Air Force. Growing up in a military environment exposed Munn to different cultures from a very young age, but this experience also involved verbal abuse from her stepfather, bullying in school, and a struggle with her confidence.

Her mother divorced her stepfather, prompting Munn and her family to return to the States. When she arrived, she finished her junior and senior year in high school, then attended college at the University of Oklahoma, majoring in journalism with minors in Japanese and Dramatic Arts. After graduating, Munn took on an internship at NBC affiliate KJRH-TV in Tulsa and at Fox Sports Networks as a sideline reporter before relocating to Los Angeles.

Munn first started to gain attention in the mid-2000s as a host on G4’s Attack of the Show!, a live TV program that covered what was relevant in pop culture. At this time, Asian Americans and women were both still underrepresented, so Munn’s work in the gaming and pop culture world drew audiences to her.

After leaving Attack of the Show! in 2010, she scored a small role in Iron Man 2, leading to Robert Downey Jr. praising her for her improv skills. Munn later earned her most recognizable television role on HBO’s The Newsroom as financial journalist Sloan Sabbith, which is where her acting range was truly showcased. In 2016 Munn was casted as Psylocke from the Marvel Universe and appeared in X-Men: Apocalypse, marking one of her biggest blockbuster roles.

Beyond the movie screens, Munn has spoken up about representation in the industry, discussing the limited roles that have historically been available to Asian Americans. She has pushed for more authentic Asian portrayals and has also used her platform to speak on anti-Asian violence in the United States. From her multicultural upbringing to her Hollywood success, Olivia Munn is doing her part to help change the landscape of representation in media.

Coachella has evolved into a significant cultural hub for Asian American festivalgoers, who now represent a growing demographic of “power attendees.”  This influence is reinforced by the festival’s proximity to Los Angeles – home to the second-largest Asian American population in the U.S. – and the community’s high purchasing power, with Asian American household incomes being 45% higher than the national median.

Despite 2026 tickets being sold out, the financial investment remains high for a return to a projected full capacity of 250,000 attendees.  3-day passes cost between $549–$649 and resale prices climb to $860, while VIP tiers reach $1,960.  

A “Global Pop” roster designed to capture international demand has fueled this demographic shift.  In 2024, Asian Americans over-indexed making up 11% of attendees, with sets by Yoasobi and LE SSERAFIM drawing crowds that were over 60% Asian.  Historical demand for past acts like Blackpink and XG has further cemented this engagement.

The 2026 lineup features 10 key Asian acts across both weekends, including global girl group KATSEYE, Grammy-winner Laufey, and P-pop group BINI.  Other notable performers include Fujii Kaze, BIGBANG, and Yousuke Yukimatsu.

This convergence of global talent and local demographics has transformed Coachella into a high-stakes cultural summit, where the Asian American community’s influence is now woven into the festival’s financial and social fabric.

On April 2nd, pop star Olivia Rodrigo officially announced the release of her third studio album, you seem pretty sad for a girl so in love, arriving on June 12th.

The 23-year-old has quickly skyrocketed to the top of the mainstream music landscape with over 46 million monthly Spotify listeners and 15 million YouTube subscribers.

Rodrigo arrived on the scene in 2021 with her debut album Sour, which contained two defining tracks, “Drivers License” and “Good 4 U.”  Both number one hits helped the album reach the top of the Billboard 200, earning three Grammy Awards including Best New Artist.

Released in 2023 her sophomore album, Guts, again topped the charts led by her third number one single, “Vampire.”

The same year she unveiled the original song, “Can't Catch Me Now,” specifically written for the blockbuster soundtrack The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes.

Rodrigo, who is of Filipino heritage, was raised in Temecula, California.  Her career in the entertainment industry began in 2015 with a lead role in the American Girl film series, before achieving breakout success on the Disney Channel.

She attended a poetry course at USC as a visiting undergraduate student, which helped inspire her second album.

Already with a combined following of 64 million on Instagram and TikTok, Rodrigo’s career trajectory is still in its explosive early stages.

The world has been introduced to K-beauty and J-beauty, but recently, a new wave of Chinese brands, or C-beauty, are beginning to attract global attention. Florasis is one of those brands that is blending Chinese aesthetics with modern cosmetics.

Florasis was developed in Hangzhou in 2017 by Chinese entrepreneur Wu Chenglong, alongside co-founder Fei Man with the vision to create a beauty brand that would showcase Chinese culture within their cosmetics while still competing with global giants.

From the very beginning, Florasis stood out because of their intricate engraved packaging and design. Products like lipsticks and eyeshadow palettes quickly went viral on social media, especially with rising Chinese trends that have been flooding the algorithm.

Not only were the company’s products aesthetically pleasing to look at, they also incorporated elements of Traditional Chinese Medicine. Florasis uses natural, sensitive-skin friendly ingredients like pearl powder, ginseng, and floral extracts, positioning the brand as both culturally rooted and science-backed.

During the early marketing stages, Florasis leaned heavily into influencer gifting and livestreaming, which has become a major way to generate sales for many industries. Florasis reported $800 million in annual revenue in 2021, which allowed them to begin expanding internationally across Asia.

Of course, success doesn’t come without challenges, and in 2023, the brand faced backlash after consumers were criticizing what became known as the “79 yuan eyebrow pencil”, which is currently equivalent to around $11.50 USD. Consumers questioned the price and whether it was fair in comparison to competitors and comments made during a live stream about the product only added fuel to the fire.

More recently, Florasis has been navigating leadership changes and global expansion with Melina Zhao currently active as CEO of the company’s North America Division. With goals to open 50 stores by 2027, Florasis is shifting into Western markets and the brand is tweaking their message, highlighting innovation and universal beauty rather than traditional symbolism.

Florasis is more than just a makeup brand. It represents a bigger change in the beauty industry where Chinese companies are beginning to compete on the international scale, even with those in the high-end sector.