Through July 4, The Post, in conjunction with the Milken Center for Advancing the American Dream, is featuring US citizens explaining what the American dream means to them in 2026 — including Sasha Cohen. The daughter of an immigrant from Ukraine, she won a silver medal in figure skating at the 2006 Olympics and is now an investment manager in California.
The American dream is about social upward mobility. It’s about being able to do better than your parents and hoping that your children will do better than you did. It’s about equality of opportunity, and it’s about possibility. About things that aren’t necessarily available to people in a lot of other countries in the world. It’s the land of opportunity.
Because I was born in the United States, I had the choice to go into gymnastics and then also into figure skating. It wasn’t a state-run program where the state chose who got to do what …
[After the Olympics], I wanted an education. I had so much curiosity about what the world had to offer and I needed to find my place in it. I was never going to be defined by what I did at 21. When I am 60, I don’t want to be remembering that the best night of my life was, you know, in my twenties. America offers so many opportunities [for Olympians] because of the strength of our education systems, because of the love that the people have for sports and their heroes at the Olympics.
Since the seventies and eighties the American dream has been on, unfortunately, a decline as our middle class has shrunk. There’s more of a divide between public schools and private schools, those who have and those who do not. But we’re also going into a time where everything is available at our fingertips, through our smartphones and via the internet. And so there’s more of an opportunity for people to carve out their own futures [outside] the traditional models.
Despite the problems, there are new ways to excel that didn’t exist before because of the ways that technology has emerged.
The American Dream Video Project showcases real stories that illuminate pathways to opportunity. Featured at the Milken Center for Advancing the American Dream (MCAAD), this series is part of the Center’s celebration of America’s 250th anniversary. MCAAD is Washington, DC’s newest cultural institution, offering interactive exhibits and stories about achieving the American Dream. For more information, visit mcaad.org.