striver

noun

1. One who strives.

   “I am angered not only by such bloodsucking selective memory, but also at another example of how gay "respectability"-strivers try to distance themselves from the nonconformists and fringe members of our movement.”

   “The company’s namesake, Condé Montrose Nast, was a Gilded Age striver from St. Louis who purchased a sleepy society gazette called Vogue in 1909 and made it an arbiter of women’s fashion […].”