Charles Hazlewood dusts off and invigorates classical music, adding a youthful energy and modern twists to centuries-old masterworks. At TEDGlobal, he conducts the Scottish Ensemble.

Biotech entrepreneur Hadyn Parry leads a science start-up that develops GM insects to fight dengue fever.

Sasha Kutabah Sarago is a proud Wadjanbarra Yidinji, Jirrbal and African-American woman who founded Ascension -- Australia's first digital lifestyle platform for women of color.

Lisa Bu has built a career helping people find great stories to listen to. Now she tells her own story.

Ai-jen Poo has spent the last 20 years bringing care and respect to the women that care for us.

Fields Wicker-Miurin wants to improve the quality and impact of leadership worldwide by discovering leaders in unique, local settings and connecting them with one another.

Dixon Chibanda is passionate about the human brain, how it influences our behavior and what we can do to make everybody happy.

By day, Judy MacDonald Johnston develops children's reading programs. By night, she helps others maintain their quality of life as they near death.

Laura Vanderkam shatters the myth that there just isn’t enough time in the week for working professionals to live happy, balanced and productive lives.

After creating and conducting a worldwide virtual choir on YouTube, Eric Whitacre is now touring with an astonishing live choir.

Steven Cowley directs the UK's leading fusion research center. Soon he'll helm new experiments that may make cheap fusion energy real on a commercial scale.

Heather Knight runs Marilyn Monrobot, which creates socially intelligent robot performances and sensor-based electronic art. (and she helped build the amazing Rube Goldberg machine for OK Go’s “This Too Shall Pass.")

Natalie Warne did not let being too young stop her from running a successful campaign for the Invisible Children project In this talk, she calls on young people everywhere not to let age stop them from changing the world.

Diane Wolk-Rogers has been a Florida public school teacher for more than three decades.

Retired from education and the investment business, Riley Moynes concentrates his time on helping retirees -- and those close to retiring -- make the most productive and meaningful use of the years ahead.

A Silicon Valley executive, entrepreneur and marketing specialist, Peter Hirshberg might just be the definitive voice on how new technology affects business and culture.

When it comes to aging well, having “good genes” (or rather, mutant ones) is key, says Cynthia Kenyon. She unlocked the genetic secret of longevity in roundworms — and now she’s working to do the same for humans.

Pulitzer winner Laurie Garrett studies global health and disease prevention. Her books include "The Coming Plague" and "Betrayal of Trust," about the crisis in global public health.

As the president of Syyn Labs, Adam Sadowsky merges art and technology to create interactive projects big and small.

Joshua Prager’s journalism unravels historical secrets -- and his own.

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.

A genre-bending musician, Gina Chavez is a truly independent recording artist.

Veterinarian, dog trainer and animal behaviorist Ian Dunbar understands our pets' point of view. By training dog owners in proper conduct (as much as he trains the dogs themselves), he hopes to encourage better relationships with dogs -- not to mention their friends and children, too.

Nili Gilbert focuses on socially aware portfolio decarbonization and bringing science into finance.

Eleni Gabre-Madhin is working to build Ethiopia's first commodities market. Re-establishing the profit motive for farmers, she believes, could help turn the world's largest recipient of food aid into a regional food basket.

Elyn Saks asks bold questions about how society treats people with mental illness.

Jacqueline Novogratz works to enable human flourishing. Her organization, Acumen, invests in people, companies and ideas that see capital and networks as means, not ends, to solving the toughest issues of poverty.

Westpac's Sarah Donnelly wants to encourage more open conversations about why and how an individual might continue to work while undergoing treatment for serious illnesses.

Kate Raworth is passionate about making economics fit for the 21st century.