Time - USA (2021-03-01)

64 TIME March 1/March 8, 2021

Ayesha

Verrall

41 • SAVING LIVES

WITH SCIENCE

BY JACINDA ARDERN

In 2020, the world discovered

a new set of heroes: people

who have committed their lives

to understanding infectious

diseases, whose expertise in the

throes of the pandemic became

lifesaving. Dr. Ayesha Verrall is

one such person. She has spent

her career seeking to stop the

spread of infectious diseases,

and in a moment of global

crisis, she used her knowledge

to advocate a science-based

approach to tackling COVID-19

and improving contact tracing

that has helped save lives

in New Zealand, especially

among those most vulnerable.

Ayesha has always understood,

and seen fi rsthand, the link

between infectious disease and

inequality. That makes health

care political, and that made

Ayesha political too. Her wisdom

on this topic is one of the many

reasons that I asked her to join

my Cabinet in November.

I feel privileged that in

Ayesha, we have someone with

expertise, with passion, but also

with heart, someone who can tell

you the stories of past patients

who have touched her as

naturally as she can talk about

the complexities of disease.

A compassionate expert, she

is the kind of leader the world

needs in this moment, and for

many years to come.

Ardern is the Prime Minister of

New Zealand

100 next

JASON

BALLARD

38 • Building for the

future

BY BJARKE INGELS

There’s a myth that to succeed

you need to be an a--hole. I

believe the opposite to be true.

It’s much easier to excel if you’re

a great human being. ICON CEO

Jason Ballard is that—with a big

Texan accent and a Stetson hat

to boot.

A conservation biologist

turned construction- technology

pioneer, Jason is a prime exam-

ple of what I call a pragmatic

utopian. He is a very down-to-

earth guy—an odd thing to say

about the man whose com-

pany’s funding from NASA

may put him on the path to be

the fi rst human to build a 3-D-

printed structure on the moon.

He’s also made an impact a little

closer to home: in 2020, ICON

completed seven 3-D-printed

homes for a low-income Austin

community. To achieve utopian

goals like designing house-size

printers that can spit out homes

for people in need, you have to

be extremely practical as well as

fanatically idealistic. Jason em-

bodies those two extremes, and,

in him, they never feel at odds

with each other.

Ingels is the chief architect and

founder of the Bjarke Ingels

Group