Introducing TIME Trailblazers: Designing and Making the Future

Click here to read the full 2026 list.

In 2005, following Hurricane Katrina’s devastating August landfall, Resilience Force founder and executive director Saket Soni moved to Louisiana to help the workers facilitating the state’s recovery. Confronted by the realities of the storm’s aftermath, Soni had a clarifying conversation with his mentor, historian Vincent Harding, who, he said, told him that the country they lived in was a work in progress: “This is a place that’s still being built, and you’re part of building it.”

To this day, it’s this ethos that underpins Soni’s advocacy, in which he supports and protects the crews who rebuild after disaster. It also provides a powerful shorthand for the apparent mission of every innovator featured on our inaugural TIME Trailblazers list, which recognizes those leaders who, across the world, are designing and making the future. 

Among them: Aicha Evans of Zoox, who imagines a future where our roads are dotted by safe, and time-efficient, robotaxis. Bjarke Ingels, a visionary architect who helped design The Dryline, the U.S.’s largest urban climate adaptation project. Mike Schultz, a gold-medalist whose company, BioDapt, creates prosthetics used by many athletes in the Paralympics. And Jason Ballard, the CEO of Icon, which 3D prints homes he hopes “will become a part of humanity’s toolkit”—and potentially help solve the growing housing crisis. 

This is a world full of potential, promise, and problems to solve. This is a world that is still being built. These 14 Trailblazers are standout examples of the many committed to building it.