Role Models for Change

Nathan (he/they) is a 24-year-old climate justice & LGBTQI2S+ advocate. He is the co-Director of the Youth Climate Justice Fund, the largest youth-to-youth participative fund on climate and environmental issues. Nathan served as the youth advisor to Antonio Guterres’ Youth Advisory Group on Climate Change from 2020-2023. He founded Generation Climate Europe - the largest coalition of youth-led net...

Archana Soreng belongs to Khadia Tribe from India. She is the Former Member of the First United Nations Secretary General's Youth Advisory Group on Climate Change 2020-2023. She is a Climate Justice Advocate working on reclaiming spaces and amplifying the Perspective of Indigenous Community in the Climate Justice Discourse. As a Young Indigenous Women, she has been working across Global, Regional...

Lyndsay Holley Handler has over 21 years of experience building, leading, and investing in high-impact businesses in Africa. Currently, Lyndsay is a Co-Founder & Managing Partner of Delta40, an investment group and venture studio investing in, building & scaling life-changing technology ventures in Africa. Lyndsay is also an Operating Partner at Equator, and is a Board Director for SunFi, PowerUp...

A pan-African feminist with roots in Cameroon, Françoise Moudouthe is deeply committed to supporting the thriving of African feminist movements. This dedication has steered her career for more than a decade. In the early stages of her career, Françoise helped The Elders with the establishment of Girls Not Brides, a global civil society partnership aimed at ending child marriage. She played a key r...

Dr. Andrea Garcia is a Physician Specialist at the Los Angeles County Department of Mental Health, where she spends some of her clinical time at the American Indian Counseling Center. She otherwise has the privilege of focusing on the structural determinants of health for the American Indian and Alaska Native (AIAN) community through issue areas such as homelessness, placemaking, data equity, narr...

Byron Ninham is Ojibwe and Oneida, born in Wisconsin and raised in Northern Minnesota. For over a decade, he has dedicated himself to teaching and supporting young people and students of all ages in Mille Lacs. Byron finds his greatest joy in helping his relatives deepen their understanding of indigenous languages and culture. He has been actively involved with We Are Healers, providing support an...

Angela has 23+ years of experience in public health in India & internationally. She is a Partner at Catalyst Group of organizations & Chief Catalyst at Swasti. From evaluation of countries’ national HIV programs to research, capacity building & knowledge management, Angela works with governments, civil society, community groups She has globally co-designed interventions & helped raise over 1.3 Bln...

Clare is the Co-founder & CEO of The Global Disinformation Index. An experienced CEO in the commercial and not-for-profit sectors, Clare was formerly CEO of the International Business Leaders Forum and MD of MTV Networks, Nordics. Clare was a founding board member of Girls not Brides, the global coalition to end child marriage.

Imran Ahmed is the founder and CEO of the Center for Countering Digital Hate. He is an authority on social and psychological malignancies on social media, such as identity-based hate, extremism, disinformation, and conspiracy theories. He regularly appears on the media and in documentaries as an expert in how bad actors use digital spaces to harm others and benefit themselves, as well as how and w...

Nighat Dad is the founder and Executive Director of the Digital Rights Foundation. She is a member of the UN Secretary-General's High-Level Advisory Board on AI (HLAB) and a founding member of Meta's Oversight Board. Her organization works on the cutting edge of the intersection of human rights and technology. Nighat has won numerous accolades, including the Dutch Human Rights Award, and has been...

Ruchit Nagar, MD, MPH is CEO and Co-founder at Khushi Baby. He is also a resident physician at Yale New Haven Hospital, training in internal medicine and pediatrics with an interest in pediatric critical care. Ruchit founded Khushi Baby as an undergraduate at Yale in 2014, and has grown the global health non-profit to a team of 75, now working as the Technical Support Partner to the Department of...

Dr. Aparna Hegde is Founder of NGO ARMMAN, which creates scalable mhealth based programs to impact maternal & child health in 21 states of India (as of August 2024, interventions implemented by ARMMAN have reached 53 million women and trained 430,000 health worker). She is an internationally renowned Urogynecologist trained in Stanford and Cleveland Clinic and Assoc Prof (Hon) and founding Head of...

Ramesh Padmanabhan is the CEO of ARMMAN. Ramesh was Chief Technology Officer (CTO) at Piramal Foundation prior to joining ARMMAN, leading technology initiatives across primary education, primary healthcare and safe drinking water. Prior to joining the Piramal Foundation in 2016, Ramesh was the CEO of NSE.IT, a technology subsidiary of the National Stock Exchange of India, for seven years. At NSE.I...

Joan Carling is an indigenous activist from the Cordillera, Philippines with more than 20 years of working on indigenous issues from the grassroots to the international level. Her expertise includes human rights, sustainable development, the environment, and climate change. She was the General Secretary of the Asia Indigenous People Pact (AIPP) From 2008 to 2016. She was an indigenous expert membe...

Juan Carlos Jintiach Arcos, current Executive Secretary of the Global Alliance of Territorial Communities (AGCT), recently nominated as a candidate for the 2023 Nobel Peace Prize, belongs to the Shuar people of the Ecuadorian Amazon. Partner and active member of the Interprovincial Federation of Shuar Centers of Ecuador - FICSH, member organization of the Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities...

Kynan Tegar is a 19-year-old photographer and filmmaker from the Dayak Iban tribe of the island of Borneo, Indonesia. Living in and around the traditional longhouse of his village, he learns directly from the elders, their wisdom and values, their stories of resistance in the face of encroaching deforestation, and the threats to their way of life. Picking up his first camera as an inquisitive twel...

Sellah Bogonko is Co-Founder & CEO of Jacobs Ladder Africa (JLA), a youth focused organization on a mission to activate 30 million jobs in the green economy in Africa by 2033. JLA is spearheading workforce readiness for the green economy in Africa through research aimed at building the Africa Green Knowledge Hub, an early-stage start-up incubator focused climate tech and development of bespoke pro...

Dr Aakash Ganju is a healthcare entrepreneur and the CEO of Saathealth, an impact focused digital health company building AI powered tools for targeted interventions and positive outcomes for health workers and consumers. Trained in medicine and management, Aakash started his career leading research teams at Pfizer and Johnson & Johnson and developing mobile health solutions for underserved popula...

Bruna Barros is the current Executive Director of RenovaBR and has +15 years of experience in consulting and auditing companies, public sector and third sector. She holds a BA in Accounting from FECAP, an MBA in International Business from BI International, 2 executive specializations in public policies (SIPA / Columbia and SAIS / Johns Hopkins) and a master's degree in Public Policy at Insper (20...

Francisco Brito Cruz (Chico) is the Co-founder and Executive Director at InternetLab, a Brazilian think tank focused on human rights and technology. Over the past decade, the organization has been actively engaged in research and dialogue to shape transformative initiatives. Francisco holds a PhD, a master's, and a law degree from the University of São Paulo School of Law (FDUSP). During his time...

Dr. L. Nneka Mobisson is co-Founder and CEO of mDoc, a digital health social enterprise which provides virtual AI-enabled self-care health coaching to people living with or at risk for chronic health needs in sub-Saharan Africa. Prior to mDoc, Dr. Mobisson served as Executive Director, Africa, at the Institute for Healthcare Improvement where she serves as Faculty Advisor and provides strategic gu...

Niniola Williams is a public health professional leading projects, initiatives, and teams to improve community health and build resilient health systems prepared for epidemics and emergencies. She is passionate about reducing the burden of infectious diseases and increasing health security through interdisciplinary approaches. Niniola currently leads Dr. Ameyo Stella Adadevoh (DRASA) Health Trust,...

Dr. Benjamin W. Wachira is an Assistant Professor of Emergency Medicine and the Executive Director of the Emergency Medicine Kenya Foundation, an NGO that supports governments and emergency healthcare providers across Kenya to save lives by strengthening the emergency healthcare system. He is also a member of the National Emergency Medical Care Steering Committee in the Ministry of Health and a fo...

Ari Johnson, MD, is co-founder and CEO of Muso, and Associate Professor at the University of California San Francisco, in the Department of Medicine and the Institute for Global Health Sciences. He has published peer-reviewed articles and essays in the fields of infectious disease, health systems design, socioeconomic determinants of health, AIDS, and migration. The co-recipient of the 2021 Charle...

Aimee Allison is the founder and president of She the People, a national organization that elevates the voice and power of women of color as leaders of a new political and cultural era. She made political history in 2019 when she organized and moderated the nation’s first presidential forum for women of color which led to to widespread recognition of the issues and strength of this voting block. F...