OC Register | Meet Orange County’s 125 most influential people for 2023

By Todd Harmonson & Michele Cardon

Orange County is home to approximately 3.2 million people, so it’s a nearly impossible task to choose .000039% of them to represent a year with so many incredible stories from such a diverse, vibrant community.

Nearly, but not impossible.

We at the Orange County Register relied on nominations from our loyal readers and our staff members who cover the county, and then we compiled our annual list of the 125 most influential people in the county.

Some of them are obvious but certainly belong, though this might be Shohei Ohtani’s final appearance for a while; you might’ve read that he landed a job in Los Angeles. Others are influential out of the spotlight, but you brought them to our attention and now we want to make sure more people learn about them.

And our list, of course, includes those who did whatever it takes to help those in need.

By the way, someone’s omission from the list doesn’t mean we think they lack influence, but we try to focus on people who made a difference in 2023 that should be acknowledged.

Here are the 125 most influential people in Orange County for 2023:

Tracy La

La leads a prominent advocacy organization, VietRISE, that builds power with working-class Vietnamese people and immigrant communities in Orange County. The reader who nominated her wrote that she advocated for bold policy changes in Little Saigon cities and the passage of Santa Ana’s rent control and stabilization ordinance.