Ellen MacArthur

Ellen MacArthur grew up on a smallholding in Derbyshire, about as far from the sea as it is possible to get in England. Her aunt took her sailing at four and she was hooked. She saved her school dinner money for three years to buy her first boat, an eight-foot dinghy, and at 18 sailed single-handed around Britain.

She moved to France, where offshore sailing is a major sport, lived in a boatyard and learned French from scratch. In 2001, at 24, she finished second in the Vendée Globe, the solo non-stop round-the-world race, the youngest person and fastest woman ever to complete it. She had climbed the 27-metre mast in the Southern Ocean to make repairs, alone, in a storm.

In February 2005 she set the world record for the fastest solo circumnavigation, 71 days, 14 hours and 18 minutes, in a 75-foot trimaran, sleeping in 20-minute snatches and surviving a near-collision with a whale. She was made a Dame at 28, the youngest person to receive the honour.

She retired from competitive sailing in 2009 for an unexpected reason. Living for months on finite supplies had made her think about how the world's economy uses finite resources. In 2010 she founded the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, which works with companies and governments on the "circular economy", designing products and systems so that materials are reused rather than thrown away. The foundation now has more influence on business than she ever had on sailing.