The young leaders tackling the world’s toughest challenges

Over the last three months, we’ve featured 10 young innovators changing the world for the better. What can they tell us about their journeys, and the inspiration behind their ideas?

Cheryl Ingles

In recent weeks we’ve featured entrepreneurs and inventors under 30 from across the globe. We took a behind-the-scenes look at their remarkable achievements: from self-assembling space architecture and disease-tracking AI to a viral YouTube classroom and plastic made from recycled olive seeds.

We followed them deep into the Brazilian rainforest to revive the landscape and high into the French Alps to witness new avalanche rescue tech. We saw an affordable home built in four hours in Manila and a tech hub in Addis Ababa where the next generation learn to code.

As they refine their ideas and head for new horizons, it’s time to reflect. We asked each innovator to look back on their road to success and offer words of wisdom. We’ve also returned to themes highlighted by our experts as the most important to watch.

Click or swipe through to hear from the young people redesigning our future.

Beyza Boyacioglu

Find whatever it is that just sets you on fire.

Leigh-Kathryn Bonner, 25, Bee Downtown

Dugme Film

Our project is not only important to us, but important for all humanity and the ecosystem.

Ahmet Fatih Ayas, 25, BioLive

Beth Balaban

I want people to be able to look up in the sky like they were able to at the dawn of the Apollo era, and believe that in their lifetime they’ll get to go.

Ariel Ekblaw, 26, MIT Media Lab Space Exploration Initiative

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Global warming and the environment were two of the priority issues for our experts.

Atmospheric chemist Guus Velders, who researches the effects of gases on the ozone layer, says while the current climate debate is useful, we haven’t begun to experience the true consequences. “What seems to be missing is the urgency of taking huge steps in the right direction. We have to get started. And rather today than tomorrow.”

But headway doesn’t always mean investing in shiny new tech, warns Chad Frischmann, vice-president of Drawdown, a coalition aimed at creating unique solutions to global warming. This focus too often ignores the potential for improving existing practices to make them more efficient, affordable or scalable.

Solar power, for instance, doesn’t need be reimagined from the ground up, he says. We should be thinking simpler: “Making panels more durable, flexible and cheaper, allowing them to be installed easily on more locations.”

Cheryl Ingles

What we lack in experience, we make up for in energy and passion.

Earl Forlales, 23, Cubo

Nadine Salib

I’m an avid reader who likes to learn and spread the knowledge. So I did the things that make me happy.

Ahmed El Ghandour, 24, Da7ee7

Juan Pichardo

Technology and AI is here for good. And it’s going to help us.

Rainer Mallol, 27, AIME

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What will future workplaces and workforces look like in an evolving job economy?

“I think we’re, as a tech culture, potentially moving away from the open office as the answer to collaboration and moving toward technology systems that connect people all the time no matter where they happen to be,” says Clark Valberg, CEO of design software company InvisionApp.

But vital problems remain. Globally 193 million people are unemployed and we’re far from workplace equality. According to a 2018 study, women founders receive less than half the funding of male counterparts despite their companies performing better financially.

Solutions can only come as a collaborative effort between governments, businesses and individuals, says Winnie Byanyima, executive director of Oxfam International. “With a new generation of political leaders thinking imaginatively about a different, more human economy, the time is right to lay a better foundation for the future.”

Ana Terra Athayde

What drives me is the project’s purpose. It’s a very good cause that will benefit not only me, but also the ones next to me and the whole world.

Pedro Rutman, 28, Nucleário

Ana Terra Athayde

To grow up in Rio de Janeiro means to live side-by-side with strong inequality. This made me realize that is it possible to do something to change that.

Elisa Mansur, 27, Mopi

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The era of artificial intelligence is upon us. From healthcare and transport to education and art, a wave of adaptive technology is hitting even the most analogue industries.

“This reality brings a tremendous amount of opportunity and risk,” says Cynthia McCaffrey, director of global innovation at Unicef. “While AI will add enormous value to our global and local economies, automation will overhaul the landscape of opportunities… for current and future generations in ways we can’t fully predict.”

Experts agree AI’s arrival signifies the laying of fundamentally new bedrock for society and the economy. Theoretical physicist Steven Cowley cautions against going too far. When everything can be predicted in advance - from the spread of diseases to the tastiness of pastries - the world may lack surprises. “Indeed, do we want less surprises?” he asks. “Who will own the models and data?”

With great predictive power comes great responsibility. The designers of tomorrow must balance the scales of AI dominion.

Thomas Lewton

When I see — especially, girls — doing something that could impact their community through tech, it inspires me most.

Betelhem Dessie, 20, iCog Anyone Can Code

Andrea Neri

There are plenty of projects just waiting for somebody to make them. Not trying would be the worst mistake. Go ahead, because you will always find a solution.

Titouan Parand, 23, X-tract