Most creative people

This story is part of Fast Company’s Most Creative People in Business 2022 . Explore the full list of innovators who broke through this year—and had an impact on the world around us. advertisement As Microsoft’s corporate VP for customer security and trust, Tom Burt leads the division of the company that protects customers—individuals, corporations, and governments—from cyberattacks. That means securing their data not just from ordinary thieves and fraudsters, but some of the most formidable digital foes: hackers backed by powerful governments, including the Russia-linked groups that launched cyberattacks in Ukraine this past spring. Engineering is naturally a big part of those efforts. But Burt, the former head of Microsoft’s litigation unit, is a lawyer, not a coder, and his background has proven useful in waging cyber battles. He helped thwart the Ukrainian attacks by appealing to the U.S. court system to quickly seize and take down seven internet domain … [Read more...] about How Microsoft VP Tom Burt protects individuals and governments from cyberattacks

David Hughes put aside his work studying ant behavior at Penn State University in 2012 to launch PlantVillage , a United Nations-backed initiative that uses smartphones and AI to help farmers from West Africa to Australia adapt to climate change. Initially used to track and assist with plant diseases, the app was rapidly recalibrated in 2020 to assist with a historic locust plague that hit dozens of countries, including  Kenya, Ethiopia, and Somalia. advertisement Here’s how the apps work: PlantVillage eLocust3M advertisement Read more about Fast Company’ s Most Creative People in Business 2021 advertisement advertisement advertisement advertisement advertisement … [Read more...] about How one scientist is saving crops around the world via AI-enabled apps

This story is part of Fast Company’s Most Creative People in Business 2022 . Explore the full list of innovators who broke through this year—and had an impact on the world around us. advertisement advertisement On the evening last June when Michael R. Jackson’s A Strange Loop won Best Musical at the Tonys, Broadway fans were hardly surprised. For months, the musical had been generating buzz—and $6 million at the box office—on rave reviews and a 2020 Pulitzer Prize for Drama. And yet, A Strange Loop —for which Jackson composed the score and wrote the lyrics and book—is far from your typical Tony winner: It’s is a post-modern hall of mirrors about a poor, young, Black, queer man named Usher, who is employed as an actual usher at a Broadway theater, even as he struggles to write a semi-autobiographical Broadway musical. A cast of six supporting actors share the stage, giving voice to Usher’s conscious and sometimes subconscious thoughts, which … [Read more...] about Michael R. Jackson reveals the genius behind his hit musical ‘A Strange Loop’

This story is part of Fast Company’s Most Creative People in Business 2022 . Explore the full list of innovators who broke through this year—and had an impact on the world around us. advertisement “The hot dog is sort of an ambassador for the company,” says Gina Asoudegan, who for 16 years has helped New Jersey-based Applegate Farms fulfill its mission of “changing the meat we eat.” Although they aren’t Applegate’s top-selling item—chicken nuggets are—hot dogs, with their iconic American food status, have become a showcase for innovation at the company, which sells humanely raised, non-GMO, antibiotic-free deli meats, sausages, burgers, bacon, and cheese in more than 22,600 stores nationwide. (Hormel Foods purchased the company in 2015 for roughly $775 million). When it landed on grocery shelves last November, the Do Good Dog became the first nationally distributed hot dog “made with beef raised on verified regenerative U.S. grasslands,” the culmination of a … [Read more...] about Hot diggity! Applegate’s Do Good Dog is a regenerative-agriculture first

This story is part of Fast Company’s Most Creative People in Business 2022 . Explore the full list of innovators who broke through this year—and had an impact on the world around us. advertisement Profit margins in the construction industry rely heavily on the low-cost production of materials from around the world, such as lumber, concrete, and steel, which can be procured from locations like China and Russia that have troubling human rights records. “You’re subsidizing ROIs with slavery,” says Sharon Prince. Struck by this reality in 2015 while overseeing construction for a new headquarters for her interdisciplinary humanitarian nonprofit, Grace Farms Foundation, she began making the elimination of modern slavery part of the organization’s mission. In 2020 Prince created the Design for Freedom movement, a partnership of 80 construction industry leaders that tracks building materials made with slave labor and works to get those products out of the supply chain … [Read more...] about The construction supply chain is plagued by slave labor. She’s changing that

This story is part of Fast Company’s Most Creative People in Business 2022 . Explore the full list of innovators who broke through this year—and had an impact on the world around us. advertisement advertisement The desire to be seen is a profound human need, and yet we sometimes yearn to avoid recognition, too. It’s a paradox that manifests itself in that small joy we feel in an empty elevator, or the relief when the chatty neighbor doesn’t realize you’re behind them in the checkout line at the supermarket. The tension between wanting to be seen and unseen—to be needed and unbothered—is at the heart of the critically acclaimed, Peabody-winning CBC series Sort Of , which returns for a second season this fall (and is streaming in the U.S. on HBOMax). In the show, Bilal Baig plays Sabi, a genderfluid, Muslim, first-generation South Asian Canadian working as a nanny and bartender in Toronto while navigating family, relationships, and the occasional … [Read more...] about How ‘Sort Of’ star Bilal Baig turned the idea of visibility inside out

This story is part of Fast Company’s Most Creative People in Business 2022 . Explore the full list of innovators who broke through this year—and had an impact on the world around us. advertisement advertisement “In everything that we do, one of the first questions I ask is, ‘What’s the intention of this?'” says Kingsley Gbadegesin of his queer-focused fashion brand K.ngsley . The Brooklyn-based, Nigerian-American designer worked in sales and marketing for Versace, Celine, and Loewe before spinning out his own company in 2020 with a line of cut-out tank tops inspired by a DIY club look he once made with a pair of scissors and a white tank top. His tops are now carried by Nordstrom, Ssense, The Culture Edit, and Moda Operandi, and have been worn by celebrities that include Lil Nas X, Jack Harlow, and Zaya Wade. Last year, Gbadegesin expanded K.ngsley into a full-fledged fashion brand with the launch of a ready-to-wear collection of genderless … [Read more...] about This is what fashion looks like when queerness is at the center

This story is part of Fast Company’s Most Creative People in Business 2022 . Explore the full list of innovators who broke through this year—and had an impact on the world around us. advertisement advertisement Picture the coolest, most ridiculously awesome room you can imagine. Maybe it’s got a golf simulator and a billiards table, or radiant-heat floors, or polychromatic India Mahdavi furniture, or meticulously cultivated hygge. Whatever it is, whatever you’re envisioning, it would be even better if it had a secret door leading to another room. And of course, a secret door has to reveal itself in some sick way, like how you run through a wall to get to track 9 3⁄4, or wade through a coat closet to get to Narnia, or turn a bronze eagle on a bookshelf, or push the correct button on a soda machine. It can’t just be a switch labeled secret door, though that’d be kind of funny. That kind of meta humor would be very on-brand for Mark Rober, except … [Read more...] about How Mark Rober became the Willy Wonka of engineering

In 2020, 56% of Americans agreed that journalists were purposely trying to mislead people, illustrating an unprecedented dip in confidence in the press. With that backdrop, and in an election year with peak political polarization, rolling out a brand-new media publication was “absurd,” admits Nabiha Syed, president of The Markup , a digital outlet focused on holding tech companies accountable. “How are we going to get people to trust us when they’ve never heard of us, especially when we are interrogating tools that people are using and are sometimes beloved?” advertisement advertisement But the founders felt that the site’s mission was critical: to investigate the power and practices of Big Tech. Plus, it was going to do things differently. The Markup is nonprofit newsroom, funded by philanthropists, including more than $20 million from Craigslist founder Craig Newmark. It is data-driven, and only publishes about twice a week, in order to be as … [Read more...] about This news outlet is exposing Big Tech’s practices by building its own tech tools

The United States formally established diplomatic ties with Beijing in 1979. When the US moved to recognize the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and de-recognize the Republic of China (ROC), it held that the PRC was and is the only China. The US, however, did not recognize Chinese sovereignty over Taiwan. (Image: News18 creative) Why would China risk direct confrontation with the United States, its second-biggest trade partner and a primary source of new technology, over the Taiwan issue? There are historical, emotional, and political reasons behind Beijing’s obsessive desire to take Taiwan. But an equally important reason is semiconductors, the power behind dozens of tech products from the humble mobile phone to missile systems. (image) China produces just about 5% of the world’s semiconductor chips, and the US makes an equal amount. It is... … [Read more...] about The Eastern Window: A semiconductor crisis in the offing?