Twitter’s top lawyer Vijaya Gadde and UK’s finance minister Rishi Sunak, an Indian activist….the list of TIME100 goes on. Five Indian-origin personalities have been featured in TIME magazine’s annual list of 100 “emerging leaders who are shaping the future”. The 2021 TIME100 Next is an expansion of TIME’s flagship TIME100 franchise of the most influential people in the world. Bhim Army chief Chandra Shekhar Aazad is also there on the list.
“Everyone on this list is poised to make history. And in fact, many already have,” Dan Macsai, the editorial director of the TIME100, said. Other Indian-origin personalities on the list are Instacart founder and CEO Apoorva Mehta, doctor and Executive Director of nonprofit Get Us PPE Shikha Gupta and founder of nonprofit Upsolve Rohan Pavuluri.
Sunak’s profile in the TIME feature says that a little over a year ago, the 40-year old was an “unknown junior minister in the British government”. But things changed after he was named to lead Britain’s Treasury last year, he “quickly became the benevolent face of the government’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic, approving large handouts for many citizens whose jobs were disrupted by the virus.” The profile also said that Sunak was criticised for advocating early relaxation of lockdown rules.
The TIME profile said on Mehta that in the initial days of the COVID-19 pandemic, Instacart “faced a tidal wave of orders, as people with means opted en masse to pay the service’s workers to buy groceries for them.” Instacart also “faced new criticism about the way it treated its workers, including labyrinthine sick-pay policies, frequent rule changes for shoppers and demanding performance metrics.” “The smartphone is the supermarket of the future. We are going to help co-create that,” Mehta said.
The TIME profile described Gadde, 46, as “one of Twitter’s most powerful executives”. He was the one to convey the news to CEO Jack Dorsey that President Donald Trump’s Twitter account had been suspended following the Capitol conflict of early January.
The profile read, “While Twitter is still home to much misinformation and harassment, Gadde’s influence is slowly turning the company into one that sees free speech not as sacrosanct, but as just one human right among many that need to be weighed against one another.”
Bhim Army chief Chandrashekhar Aazad, runs 34 schools to help Dalits get rid off poverty through education. The profile says “practices a distinct brand of assertiveness, sweeping into villages on loud motorbikes to protect victims of caste-based violence and organising provocative demonstrations against discrimination.”
“In a crisis, small acts can make a big impact. And in extraordinary times, ordinary people, driven by service, can do extraordinary things. The early days of the COVID-19 pandemic were some of the darkest in America’s history. A leadership vacuum from the White House contributed to health care professionals across the country lacking the personal protective equipment they needed to stay safe and save lives,” it said on Gupta and her team. Gupta heads the Get Us PPE organisation. The organisation helped distribute more than 6.5 million pieces of PPE to frontline workers.
Pavuluri is the 25-year founder. She found the free online tool that helps users fill out bankruptcy forms on their own. Upsolve, founded by Pavuluri in 2018 helped American users relieve more than USD 300 million in debt.
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