For me, the term "role model" is much less about how impressed I am with a person's achievements and much more about how much I'd like to model my life after theirs. You know, that's kind of what's implied by the word "role model." But there are a lot of people who I respect or admire while also realizing that I wouldn't want to model my life after theirs.
Barack Obama has certainly lived an impressive life for reasons that don't need to be explained. But if ever asked me if I wanted to trade lives with Obama, my answer would be, "Hell no!" I don't want to be a professional politician, I certainly don't want the stress that would accompany being the head of the executive branch, either in terms of the pressure/responsibility of the position, and the numerous restrictions that come with it, such as a total lack of free time. Even in his post-presidential life, I wouldn't want the fame that comes with being a former president, or having a lifetime of being Secret Service protection. I rather like being a "normal" citizen. There are lots of things that I can do that Obama can't, like being an anonymous member of a crowd. I don't want Obama's life. I don't want to emulate his career. So it would be really weird for me to take his live and use it as a model for how to live my own life.
By the same token, I have no desire to trade lives with someone like Steve Jobs or Elon Musk. I work in a creative field, but there are a lot of people who I admire creatively who I nonetheless have no desire to emulate, and thus don't treat as "role models." When I look at people who are 100% devoted to their craft or their business, there is something that I do find admirable about that, but there's also a part of me that sort of shudders and hopes that I never become that sort of person -- not because I have any negative moral judgment of these people and what they do, but simply because that's not the kind of life that I think I would find enjoyable and fulfilling.
More and more, I find myself looking at the "complete package" when it comes to role models, and it ultimately comes down to the question of whether I'd want to trade lives with them if I had the chance. For example, I treat Brandon Sanderson as a role model. This is partly due to the fact that he's accomplished in his field (being one of the most eminent fantasy writers), but it's also due to the fact that I look at his life and see it as being pretty close to what my ideal life would be: he wakes up in the late morning and writes for four hours. Then he spends the afternoon/evening with his family, and then writes in the late evening into the wee hours of the morning and goes to bed late, ready for a late weekend. After every book release, he does book-signing tours where he gets to meet face-to-face with his fans and do live Q&A's with them, and notably, these tours are basically 100% interaction with fans and book store owners (as opposed to something like a Hollywood press tour, which is mostly interacting with press and looking good in front of the camera). Also, a very important piece of the puzzle is that he's taken the time to build a family -- he's been married for 12 years and has three children. When he goes to fantasy conventions filled with the sorts of people who read his books, he becomes a local celebrity for a brief period of time, but when he goes out in public, he doesn't get swarmed by random people saying "Oh my gosh, that's Brandon Sanderson!" in the same way that a famous actor might. By all accounts, he leads a relatively "normal" life while also being the sort of person who signs multi-million dollar book deals.
That sounds pretty close to my ideal life in every way -- unlike someone like Larry Page or Sergey Brin (who started off as a programmer/researcher and then had to pivot into an executive role where they no longer write code), Brandon Sanderson is an author who spends most of his time sitting at a word processor and writing stories (when he's not on book tour). One thing that I think is very important to point out is that one of the biggest things that has elevated Brandon Sanderson to "role model" status for me isn't simply his creative output or his body of work -- while I do enjoy his fantasy novels, I can name plenty of other books that I enjoy more. However, Brandon Sanderson teaches creative writing and I spent many hours watching his lectures on Youtube where he sort of breaks down how he built his career and developed his craft, step by step, in a way that actually makes me think, "Hey, here's a career model for me to emulate," as opposed to just looking at a best-selling fantasy novel on my bookshelf and thinking, "Huh, I wonder how he did that."
A big part of an effective role model is someone who can actually make you say, "Hey, I actually want to be like this person." But I think another important part of it is someone who can make you say, "Hey, I actually could be like this person."
The more closely you identify with someone in particular, the easier it is to see yourself potentially following their same trajectory, which I think is a big part of why I think people find it helpful to find someone of the same race/gender/culture/group/age that they can identify with. (I feel like age is a big one -- it's rare for any of my role models to be over the age of 50, simply because anyone that old built their career in a time that was completely different from my own. If I look at what it took for someone like J.R.R. Tolkien to become a professional author, the publishing was just so different back then that it's really hard for me to draw comparisons between his career and mine.) I'm a Chinese-American immigrant, and when I see another Chinese-American achieving success, there is a certain sense that if something is possible for them, then it's possible for me. Likewise, when I see Asian Americans achieving fame and success in a field where they're not normally represented, there is a certain sense of, "Hey, good to see us." However, there are certain kinds of success that I find it impossible to identify with or see myself in. For example, Forever 21 was created by Do Won Chang and Jin Sook Chang (both Asian American), but there's nothing about their success that makes me think, "Hey, I could do that too!" I mean, yes, they do serve as proof that it's possible for an Asian American to create a multi-billion dollar clothing store chain, but I have no idea how they accomplished it. I'm actually more likely to see the Asian-American owner of a small local business as a role model than someone like Do Won Chang or Jin Sook Chang. Their success feels completely opaque and ineffable to me.
These kinds of things can be made a heck of a lot more effable when you find someone who not only achieves success, but also gives you hints about how they got there. Sometimes, this means spending lots of time talking about their early career. Other times, this means having an early career that you can follow closely. Going back to the Sanderson example, I actually find a lot of his more recent lectures less helpful than the older ones I first discovered from 2010, mainly because when I look at his work from 2010, it's much easier for me to say, "Yeah, I understand how he got here," whereas if you look at where he is in 2018, he's just become so prolific that the idea of ascending to his level of success seems like something impossible and completely insurmountable.
I think this is a big part of why a lot of people who produce long-form content or content that takes a more conversational style -- like podcasters and Youtubers -- seem to be much more effective as "role models." Ditto for people who inject a lot of themselves into their work, like standup comedians (and again, Youtubers who have a personality-driven format). Having a large social media presence can also be a big contributor to this. What kind of person is Stephen King? What is his life like? I don't really know. (Maybe I could know, if I spent an day or two watching interviews with him on Youtube.) But I know what kind of like Jeff Gerstmann or Vinny Caravella has, because I listen to their podcast every week. I know what kinds of things they struggles with in their professional live, what they enjoy vs what they endure, and the highlights and lowlights of being a professional video game journalist from their perspective because I spend so much time immersed in his world and experiencing it vicariously through their content.
The internet has made creators a lot more accessible (through the sorts of content I've described), but it's also opened up the possibility for people to discover potential role-models who are a lot more proximate. Like I said before, I find it easier to identify with the success of a local Asian American small business owner than I might with a billionaire Asian American business owner, and by the same token, in my creative circles it seems really common for people to actually spend more people expressing admiration for people who are similiar to themselves in terms of skill level or career success. If I see myself as being a 4/10 for a certain skill, when I look at someone who's a 10/10, part of me just wants to cry -- there have been times when I've looked at a piece of art and thought, "this is so far ahead of what I'm capable of, clearly I'll never be able to reach this level, so why even bother?" Whereas if I'm at a 4/10 and I'm looking at someone who's a 5/10, it's much easier for me to say, "This person is clearly better than I am, but I can also see the specific ways in which their work is better than mine, which gives me a model for how I might improve my own work, and maybe if I keep working I can reach their level." And what can be even better is if I'm a 4/10, and I'm looking at an author who is currently a 10/10, but whose early novels are more like a 5/10, which not only gives me something that I myself could aspire to, but also the hope that if they were able to "level up" and improve from a 5/10 to a 10/10, then maybe it's possible for me to some day be on their level as well.
