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Ruby Polanco, the Honduras-born founder of Ruby Makeup Academy, based in Temple City, California, came to America like hundreds of thousands of other immigrants--she was brought here as a child. "The transition from Honduras was very scary," says Polanco, who was just 12 years old when she arrived in the U.S. almost three decades ago. With her mother and two brothers, Polanco lived in Los Angeles, in a 300-square-foot apartment with no kitchen. School, she says, was "very hard on kids who didn't speak English." And the convoluted process of obtaining green cards--particularly challenging for immigrants from Central America--added to the family's sense of insecurity. At 17, Polanco was a pregnant high school dropout, married to a man she'd divorce a year later. READ MORE AT INC.