Time - USA (2021-03-01)

4 Time March 1/March 8, 2021

Nwaka Okparaeke photographs Manchester

United forward Marcus Rashford in

Manchester, England, remotely via iPhone

Quil Lemons photographs fashion designer

Telfar Clemens in Brooklyn

As we Assembled our second AnnuAl

TIME100 Next list—an expansion of our flag-

ship TIME100 franchise that highlights 100

emerging leaders who are shaping the future—

what struck me most was how its members are

coping with crisis.

Amid a global pandemic, deepening inequal-

ity, systemic injustice and existential questions

about truth, democracy and the planet itself,

the individuals on this year’s list provide “clear-

eyed hope,” as actor, composer and director Lin-

Manuel Miranda puts it in his tribute to poet and

TIME100 Next honoree Amanda Gorman. They

are doctors and scientists fighting COVID-19,

advocates pushing for equality and justice, jour-

nalists standing up for truth, and artists sharing

their visions of present and future.

As with Miranda and Gorman, many of the

TIME100 Next profiles are written by TIME

alumni—a testament to the ways that influence

flows across generations. One example: Dr. An-

thony Fauci, who recently turned 80, calls his

fellow immunologist and National Institutes of

Health colleague Kizzmekia Corbett, 35, “a ris-

ing star” whose work—which was key to the de-

velopment of the Moderna vaccine for COVID-

19—“will have a substantial impact on ending

the worst respiratory-disease pandemic in more

than 100 years.”

Equally powerful is the influence flowing

between these emerging leaders themselves.

Greta Thunberg, 18, TIME’s 2019 Person of the

Year, writes about 24-year-old Uganda-based

Vanessa Nakate, whose Rise Up movement

focuses on the disproportionate impact of

climate change on the African continent and the

Global South. “In this moment of intersecting

crises—from COVID-19 to racial injustice, from

ecological problems to economic inequality—

Vanessa continues to teach a most critical

lesson,” Thunberg writes. “She reminds us that

while we may all be in the same storm, we are

not all in the same boat.”

Although recognizing the leAders

of tomorrow lends itself to a younger

group, we intentionally have no age cap, an

acknowledgment that ascents can begin at

any age. The youngest person on this list, for

example, is 16-year-old entertainer Charli

D’Amelio, who counts more than 100 million

followers on TikTok. Among the eldest is

51-year-old Raphael Warnock, a Democratic

Senator from Georgia, whose recent election

represents “the dawn of a new South,” writes

Edward Felsenthal,

ediTor-in-chief & ceo

@efelsenThAl

Ascents

can

begin

at

any age

From the Editor

Leaders to watch

Micaiah Carter photographs musical artist

Dua Lipa in Los Angeles

Rev. Bernice A. King, the CEO of the Martin

Luther King Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social

Change.

“Everyone on this list is poised to make his-

tory,” says Dan Macsai, editorial director of the

TIME100. “And in fact, many already have.”

Indeed, when we told Jessica Byrd, who has

helped shape the movement for electoral justice,

that she was going to be included on this year’s

TIME100 Next, she shared that she was “very,

very moved” to receive another recognition from

TIME—the first being in 2015 when, at a chal-

lenging moment in her life, she was named to

a list of rising Black leaders. Two months after

that, “catapulted by the public visibility and sup-

port for my work through that list,” Byrd says

she “felt the wind at my back” and started her

firm Three Point Strategies, which went on to

work with such clients as Stacey Abrams and the

Movement for Black Lives. “And the rest, as they

say, is history.”

To see more from our TIME100 Next hon-

orees, including interviews and musical perfor-

mances, go to time.com/time100talks