Andrew Yang is a businessman, lawyer, philanthropist, and founder of the Forward Party. A second-generation American, Yang studied political science and economics at Brown University before attending law school at Columbia University. After launching a variety of startups in the early 2000s, he became CEO of Manhattan Prep, a test prep company. 

Yang founded the successful nonprofit Ventures for America (VFA) in 2011, which prompted the Obama Administration to name him a “Presidential Ambassador for Global Entrepreneurship” in 2015. A Democratic candidate for president in 2020, Yang urged voters to “Make America Think Harder” (MATH) and introduced a defining policy proposal of Universal Basic Income (UBI). Yang penned two books: Smart People Should Build Things (2014) and The War on Normal People (2018).