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FORTUNE.COM // MAY.1.19
For decades, Kyaw
Hla Aung has tire-
lessly resisted violent
discrimination against
his Rohingya people in
Myanmar. His efforts
to open schools for
Muslims and to protest
seizures of farmland
have earned the lawyer
global respect, along
with prison time.
Awarded the 2018 Au-
rora Prize for humani-
tarianism, he donated
his $1 million prize
money to fund health
care for the 700,000
Rohingya displaced by
recent ethnic cleansing.
Growing up in Guyana,
Mohabir saw firsthand
how the lack of access
to large markets can
trap small farmers in
poverty. After stints at
Deloitte and Harvard
Business School, he
returned to Guyana to
organize farmers into
a collective that could
sell in bulk, then helped
them find customers
among industrialized-
world food companies.
Next up: teaching that
business model in
other small, farming-
dependent countries.
JUST BECAUSE SOMETHING IS UNREASONABLE doesn’t make it impos-
sible. That’s the message Mick Ebeling and Daniel Epstein, two
unconventional entrepreneurs, delivered to a captivated crowd
at Fortune’s Brainstorm Health conference in April. Ebeling’s
Not Impossible Labs has developed technology that extends
abilities to the impaired, including wearables that let deaf and
hearing people alike feel music in a “surround body” experience,
and a 3D-printing lab for prosthetics in Sudan. Unreasonable,
meanwhile, devotes itself to funding growth-stage entrepre-
neurs (rather than seed- and early-stage) to help speed those
kinds of revolutionary ideas to market. Epstein cites George
Bernard Shaw, who wrote that “all progress depends on the
unreasonable man,” as an inspiration for his business philoso-
phy. He’s funded some 180 unreasonable entrepreneurs to date.
Barber sees such
issues as poverty,
racism, and voter
suppression as moral
matters, with unethical
treatment of people as
their common theme.
His “Moral Monday”
protests at North
Carolina’s State House
have drawn thousands
of marchers in recent
years. Last year he re-
vived the Poor People’s
Campaign, originally
launched by Martin Lu-
ther King Jr., to take his
message nationwide.
It’s easy to mistake Fast
Retailing’s Uniqlo unit
for “fast fashion”: Its
clothes, after all, are
cheap and ubiquitous.
But the trendy, dispos-
able nature of fast
fashion is the opposite
of what Yanai aims for.
Uniqlo’s warehouse-
style shops are stocked
with durable, practical
clothes that work in any
season, an approach
that has positioned it as
a leader in sustainable
fashion.
william j. barber ii
Pastor and Activist
kyaw hLa aung
Activist/Lawyer, Myanmar
kapiL mohabir
Managing Partner,
Plympton Farms
tadashi yanai
CEO/Founder,
Fast Retailing
CEO, NOT IMPOSSIBLE LABS (LEFT); CEO, UNREASONABLE GROUP
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PHOTOGRAPH BY STUART ISETT
