24-year-old Tsechu Dolma was raised in Nepal and returned “home” to Tibet at the age of 10 years old after her family moved to the United States for political asylum. Dolma, inspired at the young age to make places like home better, she founded Mountain Resiliency Project, a non-profit which addresses poverty and food sparing in mountain communities.
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27-year-old, Sara Minkara became blind at the tender age of 7 and was blessed with immense support from government and private institutions giving her access to attend Wellesley College and Harvard University. Her experiences in the United States shaped her outlook when visiting home, Lebanon. In Lebanon, there were few opportunities and resources for blind youth, which inspired Minkara to start Empowerment through Integration (ETI) to empower blind youth with skillsets and emotional support to achieve whatever they desire out of life, changing the way they move in the world for the better.
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25-year-old, Rachel Sumekh was a meal-privileged college student while attending UCLA. Sumekh founded Swipe Out Hunger, a program which allows college students to donate meal swipes to other students and community members in need of meals. Swipe Out Hunger is now at 23 universities and has provided over 1.3 million meals to those in need.
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30-year-old, Ashley Ford is Matter Studios' development executive. Matter Studios is a content studio producing "urgent stories with powerful, singular voices." Ford's work is visible in Elle, The Guardian and Lenny Letter to name a few. Also, Ford hosts Audible.com's interview series, Authorized, and is co-editing a book of rape survivors' stories with Roxane Gay.
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Yaa Gyasi, 27, took the literary world by storm while just in draft form, her novel, "Homegoing," earned a seven-figure advance. Born in Ghana and raised in Alabama, Gyasi's book traces the history of two sisters through slavery and emancipation.
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25-year-old, Isabelia Herrera took over as Remezcla's music editor expanding the visibility and return rate of her section with a 60.45% increase in visitors in 2016. Also, Herrera initiated an editorial partnership with NPR, helped secure Apple Music's first collaboration with a Latino curator and hosted Remezcla's first podcast.
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Sarah Jeong, 28, is a journalist and lawyer who writes about policy, law, and tech for multiple publications including Motherboard and Vice Media. Jeong is also the author of "The Internet of Garbage," has edited the Harvard Journal of Law & Gender.
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28-year-old, Jia Tolentino is an award-winning writer for NewYorker.com. Previously, Tolentino was a deputy editor of Jezebel, a contributing editor of The Hairpin, a contributing writer for The New York Times and Pitchfork just to name a few.
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28-year-old, Joanne Yuan joined Cowboy Ventures in January 2015 as an associate partner while working 30 hours and attending Stanford Graduate School of Business. Also, Yuan found the Investment Committee of the Women's Building helping 20,000 women and family each year.
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Lu Zhang, 28, founded NewGen Capital. NewGenCapital specializes in early stage tech investments raising millions making 38 investments so far, including in Chat Sports, Grubmarket and Stratifyd. "I may look like a petite Asian girl, but I don't want anyone to tell me that I couldn't do it," Zhang said. These millennial women of color are cultivating inspiration. The question is, are you going to go chase and define your dream?
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Charlotte Kiang, 25, reported as an intern for NASA's Space Shuttle launch which inspired her to be an engineer. In 2016, Kiang joined SpaceX and has managed the development of the "Crew Dragon" with the goal of sending humans to Mars.
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Annie Ryu, 26, is a social entrepreneur and founder of Global Village Fruit, which revolutionizes jackfruit to an alternative of meat. Ryu's desires to transform the world to no-meat provides farming Indian families and reduces the size of the carbon footprint.
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Sabrina-Natasha Habib, 28, is a social entrepreneur and co-founder of Kidogo, which grants accessibility for East Africa’s urban slums to affordable, quality, holistic early childhood care education. The secret to Kidogo's success is the 'hub and spoke' model which combines 'hub' centers which provide daycare services to working mothers along with 'spokes' which are mom entrepreneurs.
Source:Each year Forbes publishes a list of today’s leading game-changers and innovators across 20 different industries. These 16 women of color made the cut as they lead the way in social entrepreneurship, media, enterprise technology, and venture capital, all before the age of 30. Read more and learn about their impressive work in the gallery.
