The 10 people transforming business across sectors, chosen by Insider readers — including execs from ABC News, Shopify, and Cart.com
Insider's 100 People Transforming Business highlights leaders who are driving innovation and change across 10 verticals. This year, we added a new category called Readers' Choice.
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- Insider's 100 People Transforming Business highlights 100 leaders across 10 industries who are driving unprecedented change and innovation.
- The Readers' Choice list includes leaders from such organizations as ABC News, Shopify, and Cart.com
- Click here to read the full profiles and see the complete list of Transformers.
Insider has released its 2022 list of 100 people who are transforming business across different sectors. Keep reading to see the 10 leaders making waves who were nominated by our readers.
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In June 2016, Cheek launched Everlywell with tests for women's fertility, metabolism, and food allergies. The company, based in Austin, Texas, now offers 30 tests for things like thyroid health, STDs, colon cancer, and more. Everly Health, Everlywell's parent company, said that last year it served more than 40 million people.
"Our goal is how can we help people get tests as cheaply and quickly as possible, driven by technology, so they can get the answers they need," she said. "And if they never have to leave our ecosystem to get those answers, even better."
Lili
As the cofounder and CEO of Lili, a small-business-focused online bank, Lilac Bar David is at the forefront of an emerging group of fintech startups dedicated to working with the millions of entrepreneurs and freelancers in the US.
A key selling point for Lili, David said, is that small-business customers can see higher refunds after using the app's tax tools — she estimated that the average tax refund for Lili customers totaled $4,500 this year while the IRS said that the nationwide average was roughly $3,000.
"When we are looking at the banking industry, it's one of the most exciting industries to be in today. This is one of the industries that has not been disrupted enough," David said.
Courtesy of Kim Godwin
As the first Black female president of a US network news operation, Godwin boasts creating the most diverse team in ABC News history. Since landing the position in April 2021, increasing diversity, equity, and inclusion in the media industry has been a priority for her. This became evident during her first months on the job as she tapped several industry veterans from diverse backgrounds to expand her executive team and other top positions.
"Excuse-making is over. As executives, we must make a personal commitment to just do it," she told Insider when asked what her plan is to help increase accountability in the media industry.
Jeramie Campbell/Insider
Gudibande is working to tackle chronic diseases and inequity in healthcare — all without a single needle prick.
As the CEO and a cofounder of the biotech startup GraphWear Technologies, Gudibande is pioneering the first no-blood, no-needle glucose-monitoring test. It could be revolutionary for the 422 million people with diabetes around the world who must subject themselves to daily finger pricks to monitor their glucose levels.
Peter DaSilva/Insider
For Gupta, the founder of Beans.ai, helping people navigate the last 100 yards of their journey is personal.
While visiting from India, Gupta's mother had a medical emergency at his apartment. "The paramedics hit my property about 15 minutes before they found my apartment," he told Insider. His mom received treatment with just a minute to spare. "It was surprising that in a developed country like the US, the first responders don't have the data" to find where they need to go, he said. "They actually have this thick paper binder in every fire truck with less than a tenth of the relevant data that they flip through as they're going to an emergency."
While the stakes are much lower, delivery professionals face the same challenges at sprawling apartment complexes and labyrinthine office buildings. By crowdsourcing information about the built environment, Beans.ai is helping people get where they need to go.
Michael Dupe/Insider
A decade into her career with the Canadian government working on environmental issues, Kauk realized something: The slow and consensus-driven nature of global climate diplomacy wouldn't solve the crisis fast enough.
"Governments try to minimize risk so they don't waste taxpayer dollars, so they can't make bets the same way the private sector can," Kauk told Insider. "Companies like Shopify have the ability to move quicker because we're more tolerant of failure."
Nolwen Cifuentes/Insider
Since taking on the role of CEO of Webtoon Americas in 2016, Kim has led the digital-comics company — which originated in South Korea — to new heights, with 15 million monthly users in the US and 89 million globally.
His impact goes beyond the company's popularity. Kim has paved new ways for comics creators to express themselves, find audiences, and monetize their passions.
"It's not just professional creators," Kim told Insider. "They are from all over the world."
Jamison Weeks/Insider
What if you could almost afford to buy a home but needed an extra $10,000 to do it?
As home prices have skyrocketed nationwide up to $357,000, which Zillow says is a more than 14% climb over the past 12 months, many essential workers like teachers, restaurant employees, and firefighters found themselves in that situation.
That's why Lofton, 38, started Landed, a company that wants to make the homebuying process easier to navigate.
Hannah Latham/Insider
For travelers who want to buy some peace of mind, Hopper's app can help book a flight or hotel as well as provide the ability to cancel for any reason or lock in a flight price. As the head of fintech, Schreiber leads the team of data scientists that makes those guarantees possible for customers — and profitable for Hopper.
Over the past several years she's helped launch about a dozen add-on products, which have grown to account for 40% of all revenue at the company according to Hopper. Schreiber said that half of all bookings carry a fintech product and that customers who buy them are eight times as likely to buy one the next time they book with Hopper.
"Fintech basically led the entire recovery from the pandemic," Schreiber said.
Al Torres/Insider
While serving as a top exec at Home Depot, Tariq realized people used multiple e-commerce sites to shop, but retailers couldn't stitch all those interactions together and track sales.
So in 2020, he founded Cart.com to provide that backbone, and today, the company's technology is used by more than 6,000 brands, including the fashion retailer Guess and the skiwear brand Halfdays, to handle e-commerce analytics, inventory management, online storefronts, and digital marketing.
"We want to be the commerce-enablement infrastructure for the largest brands in the world," he said.