“I hope in some small way I can bring people and maybe even countries closer together.”

Michelle Kwan, five-time world champion figure skater is a native of California, though her parents emigrated from Hong Kong in the 1970s. Nowadays, she puts her grasp of Cantonese and Mandarin Chinese to good use as the first American public diplomacy sports envoy. In the photo, Kwan visits with blind orphans in Lan Fang, China, in 2007. (© AP images)