30 Under 30 2021

Forbes Presents the 30 Under 30 Class of 2021: 600 of the brightest young entrepreneurs, leaders, and stars

The 600 entrepreneurs, activists, athletes, scientists and entertainers who made our 10th annual list of the brightest young innovators provide millions of reasons to believe in a better tomorrow. Perhaps billions. As North America settles in for a long pandemic winter, there are bright spots on the …

By Alexandra Wilson, Alexandra Sternlicht and Brianne Garrett Young people got a pretty bad rap in 2020. They were deemed the demographic most likely to eschew health guidelines and become superspreaders—sometimes by throwing super-parties. But the digital-native generation was also the best poised to …

These 30 standouts prove the next generation of music needs no arena to be heard. In 2020, Compton-bred rapper Roddy Ricch says he got $20 million richer. After his first album Please Excuse Me For Being Antisocial debuted at No. 1 last December, Ricch won a Grammy, spent 18 weeks atop the Billboard …

Rising stars are wowing audiences while disrupting the status quo On September 20, Ramy Youssef was at home, watching a remote, socially distanced Emmy Awards ceremony like the rest of us. The difference? He was nominated for his role in Ramy, the semi-autobiographical Hulu series he created and …

This year we mark the 10-year milestone for the Forbes 30 Under 30 project, with a diverse mix of up-and-comers leading the way to our clean energy transition. Among this year’s winners in the Energy category you’ll find very few focused on fossil fuels like coal or oil. It’s little surprise that …

Here are the founders, creatives, CMOs and other marketers shaping the future of major brands and industries and the technologies that power them. Tired of long wait times at the pharmacy, Chirag Kulkarni set out in 2017 to build a better drugstore along with a pair of second-generation pharmacy …

This exceptional group of entrepreneurs, researchers and clinicians are working to solve some of the most pressing healthcare challenges. Matt McCambridge, 29, set out to build a healthcare company that would hold patients’ hands—virtually and in-person—and help them navigate the complicated health …

This year’s ambitious upstarts are making their mark through innovations in 3D printing, low-cost construction, apparel and aerospace. Starting a manufacturing business or industrial operation from scratch is tough in the best of times. With a pandemic, a sharp economic downturn and a divisive, …

The members of the 2021 Forbes 30 Under 30 Science list are turning science fiction into reality. “My father was a founder, my uncle has a logging company and my grandmother is a botanist,” says Maddie Hall, founder of the startup Living Carbon, which is growing genetically modified trees that take …

Gaming’s next generation is more influential than ever, and everyone—from consumers to investors to politicians—is taking notice. Locked down at home thanks to the pandemic, people are turning to games more than ever. An all-time high 82% of consumers around the world are playing video games or …

The 2021 Forbes Food & Drink 30 Under 30 list highlights up-and-coming superstars from the worlds of restaurants, packaged food, alcohol, recipe development and ag tech who have persevered despite the odds. Schindler and Waanders, both biomedical engineers by training, are just two of the many young …

In the face of a global pandemic and recession, this year’s Forbes Under 30 list features some of the most resilient companies of the past decade. Prisons are Covid-19 hotbeds. As the deadly disease began ripping through vulnerable, incarcerated populations last March, 29-year-old Clementine Jacoby …

During a volatile year, the 2021 Under 30 Consumer Tech listers are helping us lose weight, stay sane, heal the planet and make our homes more productive and profitable. One makes a heck of a good chicken-less chicken nugget too. In a year that has changed nearly every aspect of work, business, and …

In Forbes’ 30 Under 30 list, we highlight the retail industry’s fast-rising stars who are changing how we shop and what we buy. As a teenager, Cami Téllez remembers feeling dismayed while combing through piles of padded bras underneath photos of Victoria’s Secret’s impossibly thin supermodels. She …

Hailing from new funds, old firms and a game-changing diversity group, these standout investors represent venture capital’s next wave. Frederik Groce moved a lot growing up, living mostly in motels. A past felony conviction limited job opportunities for his father; his mother, originally from …

These young trailblazers are at the forefront of media’s everchanging landscape. Who run the world? Girls, as ardently declared by Beyoncé in her 2011 hit song “Run The World.” Nearly a decade later, Xiaoyin Qu, 27, and Xuan Jiang, 28, cofounders of the aptly named virtual events company Run The …

Listmakers of the 30 Under 30 in Finance 2021 are rising stars at Wall Street’s top firms and entrepreneurs changing the way money works. With the Coronavirus spreading like a wildfire through Asia and Europe in early February, Bharath Alamanda, 28, an analyst at Pershing Square Capital Management, …

These startups and upstarts are making it their mission to take technology to the next level. From “immigrant busboy” to CMO of Bareburger, a chain restaurant with 50 locations, is how Nabeel Alamgir short-hands his work experience in the first 25 years of his life. The longer version is much more …

At 20, Dubai-born Kehkashan Basu is the youngest person on the 2021 Forbes 30 Under 30 list in the Education category. When she was 12 years old, she founded the Green Hope Foundation in Toronto, where she lives. The all-volunteer nonprofit has worked with 100,000 young people in 16 countries to …

From a gender nonconforming comics publisher with a $5 million Kickstarter to a Michelle Obama-loved Black jewelry designer, the next generation of art and style leaders are as powerful as they are diverse. Matthew Cicanese photographed vipers in Sri Lanka for National Geographic, taught lighting …

In our tenth annual Forbes 30 Under 30 list, we feature the standouts who remind us why sports matter. When Covid-19 led to a nationwide lockdown in March, shutting down competitions, stadiums, arenas, gyms and even local tracks and trails, it seemed we were headed for a year in which sports no …

Meet the Forbes Under 30 Social Impact list and the leaders creating a more sustainable and equitable world. “Ileft Stanford thinking that I would be a professional circus performer," says 29-year-old Clementine Jacoby, who spent her first post-grad year teaching acrobatics in a Brazilian gang …

The young celebrities, executives and entrepreneurs changing what entertains us—and how we communicate. “If you had asked me ten years ago if I would ever get to 1 million subscribers, I would have said probably not,” admits Marques Brownlee, leaning back comfortably in a chair at the industrial New …

Prakriti Gaba was an internal medicine resident working at New York Presbyterian Hospital in March when the first cases of Covid-19 started coming in. Gaba, age 28, who was in the hospital’s intensive care unit, saw firsthand the devastation of the early months of the pandemic. “It was kind of just …

A digital pharmacy with $110 million in venture backing is the top funded company of Forbes 30 Under 30 2021. The list’s Female-founded companies are far from that. Men. That is the demographic that received the highest funding of the 2021 Forbes 30 Under 30 list. Though women account for 40% of the …

With reporting from Elisabeth Brier, Chris Helman, and Alex Konrad. For the tenth anniversary of the Forbes 30 Under 30 list of business leaders paving the way for future generations, eleven bitcoin and blockchain leaders were added to the list. While it took a couple years for Forbes to start counting …

It’s late in the afternoon in California in November as a group of about 50 professionals tune in to hear Kesha Cash, Ulili Onovakpuri and Richelle Parham discuss their paths into venture capital investing. As with many events in 2020, this one’s happening over Zoom. But check the chat box, and …

They live with their parents, work grueling hours and toil in corporate jobs before pursuing their dreams. Many of this year’s 30 Under 30 honorees say student debt shaped the path of their early careers. We asked all 754 individuals and cofounders on Forbes’ 2021 list whether they graduated from …