Indie newcomer Sophie Hunger's haunting vocals -- at once fragile and soulful -- carried her wistful, blues-dappled acoustic folk from intimate cafe appearances to extraordinary word-of-mouth success and cross-Europe tours.

Scott Kim designs puzzles in the spirit of MC Escher's art and Tetris -- visually stimulating, thought provoking and suffused with broad appeal.

Chris Sheldrick is providing a precise and simple way to talk about location, by dividing the world into a grid of three-meter by three-meter squares and assigning each one a unique three-word address.

Using daring displays of algorithmic trickery, lightning calculator and number wizard Arthur Benjamin mesmerizes audiences with mathematical mystery and beauty.

The co-founder of Proximie, Nadine Hachach-Haram is a curious surgeon with a passion for technology and innovation -- and a desire to make a difference in the world.

Essam Doad provides first response mental health interventions to refugees and displaced populations.

Allison Hunt has worked in advertising and marketing for 20 years, developing human insight and persuasion into an art for her clients. Six years after getting an artificial hip, she decided to try something new.

At the Lucile Packard Children's Hospital at Stanford, Elliot Krane works on the problem of treating pain in children.

Aspiring Olympic skier Janine Shepherd was nearly killed when she was hit by a truck during a training bike ride. Paralysed and immobile for six months, she was given a grim picture for recovery. But not only did she teach herself to walk again— she learned to fly.

Nancy Frates and her family have raised a projected $160 million for ALS research in 2014. How? They kicked off the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge to honor 29-year-old Pete Frates.

Scott McCloud is author of Understanding Comics, a comic book about comics. He's an evangelist for comics as a valid literary form (as more than pulp and kids' stuff) and his admiring fans include a laundry list of superstar cartoonists.

Randall Munroe sketches elegant and illuminating explanations of the weird science and math questions that keep geeks awake at night.

Christen Reighter writes and performs as a poet and essayist, focusing primarily on social justice issues.

Kashmir Hill writes about privacy and technology.

In 2021, Safi Rauf was taken captive by the Taliban while working to provide resources and assistance to Afghans in need. He was released after more than 100 days in jail and remains committed to aid work in Afghanistan and around the world.

Sergey Brin is half of the team that founded Google.

Writer, comic and mental health activist Kevin Breel speaks up about depression.

Nandan Nilekani is the author of "Imagining India," a radical re-thinking of one of the world’s great economies. The co-founder of Infosys, he helped move India into the age of IT.

A record-setting triathlete, Minda Dentler is a polio survivor committed to inspiring people to move beyond their fear of failure and achieve their goals.

BCG’s Lana Mazahreh wants individuals, companies and countries to take action against the fast-growing water crisis.

TV news legend Christiane Amanpour is known for her uncompromising approach to reporting and interviewing.

Corey Hajim curates world-changing ideas from the brightest and boldest minds in business.

"Proud Princeton dropout" Seth Priebatsch runs SCVNGR, a mobile start-up trying to build the game layer on top of the world.

Amy Lockwood is the deputy director of Stanford's Center for Innovation in Global Health, where she looks at new solutions to big problems.

David Heymann is a professor of infectious disease epidemiology at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. He led the World Health Organization's global response to the SARS epidemic in 2003.

An eternally curious student of life, Naomi Shimada engages deeply with people to understand what connects us all.

A billion people around the world lack access to health care because they live too far from a clinic. 2017 TED Prize winner Raj Panjabi aims to extend health services to the last mile.

Peter Diamandis runs the X Prize Foundation, which offers large cash incentive prizes to inventors who can solve grand challenges like space flight, low-cost mobile medical diagnostics and oil spill cleanup. He is the chair of Singularity University, which teaches executives and grad students about exponentially growing technologies.

At Clean Start Kenya, Teresa Njoroge builds bridges connecting the formerly imprisoned to the outside world and vice versa.

Roberto D'Angelo and Francesca Fedeli created the social enterprise FightTheStroke.org to open up a dialogue about the devastating effects of strokes at a young age. This issue is important to them for a simple reason: because they've been through it themselves with their son Mario.