OUR THINKERS

Harari's Sapiens reframed the human story and sold tens of millions of copies worldwide. A historian by training, he is among the most widely read interpreters of how technology is reshaping society, most recently in Nexus.

Li created ImageNet, the dataset that catalyzed the deep-learning revolution. She is founding co-director of Stanford's Human-Centered AI Institute, founded the startup World Labs, and argues that AI should be built to augment rather than replace human capability.

Yudkowsky helped found the field of AI alignment and the Machine Intelligence Research Institute, arguing for two decades that advanced AI poses existential risk. His 2025 bestseller, If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies, brought that warning to a mass audience.

A cardiologist and one of medicine's most-cited researchers, Topol is a leading voice on how AI and genomics are remaking healthcare. His bestsellers include Deep Medicine and Super Agers, his evidence-based case for longer, healthier lives.

Duflo shared the 2019 Nobel for pioneering randomized field experiments that test which anti-poverty programs actually work. The youngest person and second woman to win the economics prize, she has moved development policy from ideology toward evidence.

Murthy served twice as U.S. Surgeon General, under Presidents Obama and Biden. He used the office to reframe loneliness, youth mental health, and clinician burnout as public-health priorities, and wrote the bestseller Together on social connection.

Suzman is the chief executive of the Gates Foundation, the world's largest philanthropy, where he sets strategy across global health, development, and U.S. education. He joined in 2007 after a career in journalism and the UN.

Shah leads the Rockefeller Foundation's global work on health, food, and energy access. A physician by training, he previously ran USAID, where he directed the U.S. response to the Haiti earthquake and the West African Ebola outbreak.

Bremmer built political risk into a discipline, founding Eurasia Group and the digital outlet GZERO Media. He coined “G-Zero” to describe a world with no dominant power, a frame now common in foreign-policy debate.

The second Asian secretary-general in UN history, Ban led the organization through the adoption of the Paris climate agreement and the Sustainable Development Goals, and was a driving force behind the creation of UN Women. A career diplomat who spent more than three decades in South Korea's foreign service before serving as foreign minister, he has since focused on climate and sustainability through the Ban Ki-moon Centre for Global Citizens and other roles.

Roth shared the 2012 Nobel for market design, the field that reengineers how scarce resources get matched. His work reshaped kidney exchange, public school admissions, and medical residency placement, turning game theory into systems that save lives.

Spence shared the 2001 Nobel for showing how parties with unequal information shape markets, work anchored by his model of how education signals ability. He now focuses on growth and convergence in developing economies.

Banerjee shared the 2019 Nobel for bringing rigorous field experiments to the study of poverty. Co-founder of MIT's J-PAL, he helped shift global development from assumption toward evidence about which interventions actually work.

A mathematician turned geneticist, Lander was a principal leader of the Human Genome Project and founding director of the Broad Institute. He later served as President Biden's science advisor, the first to hold that role at Cabinet level.

Sachs is among the most influential economists in global development, advising governments and the UN on poverty, debt, and sustainability. He directs Columbia's Center for Sustainable Development and helped shape the Millennium and Sustainable Development Goals.

Hubbard led Columbia Business School for fifteen years and chaired the Council of Economic Advisers under George W. Bush, where he helped design the 2003 tax cuts. He writes widely on tax, growth, and economic policy.

A marine biologist focused on climate solutions, Johnson co-founded the ocean-policy think tank Urban Ocean Lab, co-edited the anthology All We Can Save, and wrote What If We Get It Right?, reframing climate from catastrophe toward possibility.

Novogratz pioneered “patient capital,” investing long-term in enterprises serving the poor rather than relying on aid. Through Acumen, which she founded in 2001, and her book The Blue Sweater, she has shaped how a generation thinks about poverty and dignity.

Daniels has led Johns Hopkins since 2009, expanding its research enterprise and financial aid while becoming a prominent voice on the university's role in democracy, the subject of his book What Universities Owe Democracy.

King leads SUNY, the largest comprehensive public university system in the U.S., after serving as Obama's last Secretary of Education. A former teacher and principal, he is a leading advocate for educational equity and college access.

Brous founded IKAR, a Los Angeles community widely credited with reanimating American Jewish practice. Named the most influential rabbi in America by Newsweek, she writes and speaks on showing up for one another, most fully in The Amen Effect.