Short, honest profiles of people whose courage, curiosity and persistence changed the world around them. Read one when you need a reminder of what’s possible.
Was on the ice when the 2011 earthquake struck, lost his rink, and won two Olympic golds
An asthmatic boy from Sendai whose home rink was wrecked by the 2011 earthquake, he trained between ice shows and became the first man in 66 years to…
A blacksmith climber who built Patagonia and then gave the company to the planet
He forged climbing pitons in his parents’ backyard, sold them from his car and lived on cat food. He dropped his best-selling product when he saw it…
Called a paper architect for twenty years because nobody would build her designs
She won competitions that were then cancelled and saw a decade pass with almost nothing built, before her sweeping buildings appeared around the…
A taekwondo black belt paralysed in a car crash, who shot her way to three Paralympic golds
Paralysed at 18, she took up archery in a wheelchair and became the first Iranian woman to win an Olympic or Paralympic gold, carrying her country's…
A township child turned photographer whose life's negatives were stolen in a targeted burglary
Raised by a domestic worker in a Durban township, they trained under a leading documentary photographer and built a body of portraits of Black LGBTQ…
A lawyer who closed his practice to school the orphans of a war he had no side in
A Nigerian lawyer who left the courts to build a free school for children orphaned by the Boko Haram insurgency, admitting them regardless of which…
Captured for ten years on a diplomatic mission, he came home having opened the Silk Road
Sent west by the Han emperor to find allies against a rival empire, he was captured and held for a decade, escaped, and returned with the first…
A factory worker from Beijing who studied her way to Cambridge and built China's Soho skyline
She left school at 14 to work in a garment factory in Hong Kong, saved enough to study in Britain, and returned to China to co-found SOHO China, one…
She left a state accounting job to trade wastepaper and became a self-made paper billionaire
Starting with a small stake of savings, she began exporting American wastepaper to Chinese mills, then built her own recycling and packaging plants…
A captive boy who commanded the largest fleets the world had seen, sailing seven times to Arabia and Africa
Taken prisoner and castrated as a child, he rose to admiral of the Ming treasure fleets and between 1405 and 1433 led voyages of hundreds of ships to…
A factory girl who left school at 16 and became the world’s richest self-made woman
Her mother died when she was five and her father was partly blinded in an accident. She worked long shifts making watch glass in Shenzhen, then…
Taught poor Brazilian mothers to save their own children, then died helping Haiti
A paediatrician who founded the Pastoral da Criança, a network of volunteer mothers weighing babies and mixing rehydration salts across Brazil's…
