Is there an idiom to describe someone who grew from less than average to influential?

Is there a idiom or common expression to describe someone who used to be shy, unsocial, unskilled, or even perceived to be useless, who somehow transformed himself or herself to be influential and powerful?

In other words, someone who used to be "nobody" who managed to become "somebody"

For those of you who know about Pokemon, I am thinking of something along the lines of Magikarp transforming to Gyarados, or that "mega-evolution" of that scale

to

You gave a hint: from nobody to somebody is a quite common expression.

There is also an idiom from Chinese culture which is the basis of your Magikarp-Gyarados example: "liyu (carp) jumps over the Dragon Gate." According to Chinese legend, when carps in the Yellow River jump over the Dragon Gate, they transform into dragons. The Dragon Gate refers to a grand waterfall at the Yellow River at Henan.

_Sources:

_{• Magikarp Power / tvtropes.org
• Asian Carp / wikipedia
• egreenway.com}

Well, it's a little hard to relate to the characters illustrated in your question, but down here on earth, someone who comes from "nothing" - no wealth, no family name, no power nor influence, to become a person of wealth and power is considered to have gone "from rags to riches", or can be said to have a "rags-to-riches" story.

The expression is idiomatic enough to be used in a number of book titles, including "Rags to Riches: Motivating Stories of How Ordinary People Achieved Extraordinary Wealth", by Gail Liberman and Alan Lavine