✅ EB-1A: approval
A story of obtaining EB-1A approval after two RFEs. The author shares their experience preparing and filing a petition in the field of marketing.
Case parameters
Filing: summer 2025
Decision: after 2 RFEs
Category: EB-1A
How it went
Hi everyone! This week I received approval for my EB-1A and wrote a bit about it. After a year of active work, 2 filings and 2 RFEs, here’s the summary 
Background
I decided to pursue EB-1A in 2023, but I started actively preparing the case closer to winter 2024–2025. I have 13 years in the same role and industry — marketing, hiring, top brands and IT giants on my resume. Such dedication helped me reach senior positions, but it unexpectedly made getting approval without bumps harder.
I count myself among many people who spent their lives just doing the job and didn’t bother documenting achievements. So, preparing the case required digging into all memory resources, all conversation histories and chats. For the first time I wasn’t sorry I’ve been paying for iCloud for ages, because I had to dive, by feel, into other eras of existence.
As a result, I scraped together, remembered and during case prep refined all criteria except Awards, Exhibitions and Commercial Success in the Arts.
And here I want to repeat the recommendation from all talent-visa chats: petitions are evaluated subjectively, and yours will be evaluated the same way. There is no standard here, and blindly copying someone else’s practices just doesn’t make sense. So detailing which media covered me, how I proved Contributions or where I gathered Salary stats — I see that that won’t help and may harm, boxing the case into good/bad. Besides, in the end I still didn’t find out exactly what was credited; I’ll tell below about the second RFE.
First filing: summer 2025
I filed the case in July, was 100% confident and was mapping relocation timings in Miro, planning to reach the US in December.
RFE from Texas, officer 1852 from the “black” list of killers. Template questions for almost all criteria. We answered the RFE and, unfortunately, received a denial. I consoled myself with the thought that the largest telecom operator in Russia not being a sole proprietor Shlyopkin was a sign of the officer’s indifferent judgment. I knew intellectually that it wasn’t about me, but the residue remained. What if they actually read everything?
But belief in the winter trip lived on! We made minor edits and essentially did a Copy / Paste. Took the second lottery ticket or spun the wheel — whatever you prefer.
Second filing: October 2025
Affirmations were on; I needed to take this height and prove to myself that the first officer really was an idiot. This time I couldn’t stay calm: on the last day before the review deadline I was physically shaking all day and night.
RFE. When I saw that status, relief suddenly came. No green cards in winter now for sure (the rush had been important in connection with other life events), so there was nowhere to hurry.
We waited for the text: Nebraska, officer 0557. In the RFE text there were ZERO mentions of criteria AT ALL; questions only about form (an optional field wasn’t filled) and about the Plans in the US: they wanted more specifics on the company with an LOI + more factual detail overall. The officer had only once encountered the same RFE in chats (also only Plans and questions about fo
Key insight
“Petitions are evaluated subjectively, and it’s important not to copy others’ practices, but to adapt them to your own case.”
Yana Shirokova (@yanashirokova)
summer 2025
First filing
October 2025
Second filing
Author of the story
Yana Shirokova (@yanashirokova), from the chat @talentvisahelp. Original message in the chat.
Useful on the topic
All information about O-1 / EB-1A / EB-2 NIW
More success stories and denials: channel @o1eb1