55 | CEO, Native Forward Scholars Fund

Angelique Albert leads the largest scholarship organization for Native students in the country, and in 2025, she secured one of the nonprofit’s largest donations to date: a $50 million unrestricted gift from philanthropist MacKenzie Scott. A member of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes and a first-generation college graduate herself, Albert has led Native Forward since 2017. During her tenure, she tripled the number of students it serves annually and has awarded $400 million in total scholarships to more than 20,000 students from 500 tribes across all 50 states.

64 | Co-founder & Activist, National PFAS Contamination Coalition

Clinical social worker Laurene Allen learned in 2016 that her New Hampshire town's drinking water was contaminated with PFAS, a class of toxic "forever chemicals" linked to cancer and other health problems. She cofounded Merrimack Citizens for Clean Water and later helped launch the National PFAS Contamination Coalition, connecting communities facing similar contamination across the country. Allen spent years pressing regulators and lawmakers for stronger oversight while leading the campaign against a Saint-Gobain plastics manufacturing plant linked to the contamination. Her advocacy helped build momentum for the nation's first federal drinking water standards for PFAS, finalized in 2024, the same year the Merrimack plant ceased manufacturing.

51 | Co-Executive Director, Farm Aid

In 2025, Shorlette Ammons was promoted from program director at Farm Aid to co-executive director of the Willie Nelson-founded organization. Since its founding in 1985, Farm Aid has raised more than $90 million in support of family farmers. Ammons grew up in rural North Carolina among a family of farmworkers, and before coming to Farm Aid in 2022 she served as the children’s librarian at Wayne County Public Library and also worked with the Wayne Food Initiative. Ammons also serves on the board of the Land Loss Prevention Project, which gives legal support to Black farmers and landowners in North Carolina.

62 | Inaugural Director, Press Forward

Local news has been decimated in the United States; some 3,500 newspapers have shuttered since the beginning of the 21st century and some 50 million Americans live in a news desert (with zero to one local news sources). Dale Anglin’s mission is to strengthen the local news organizations that still exist—and to ensure all neighborhoods in America have access to reliable information about their communities. Since becoming the inaugural director of Press Forward in 2024, Anglin has opened chapters in 40 regions across the country and raised more than $400 million in support of local news.

59 | CEO, XPRIZE Foundation

As CEO of the XPRIZE Foundation, Anousheh Ansari leads the nonprofit behind some of the world's largest scientific competitions, designed to accelerate breakthroughs in climate, health and technology. Under her leadership, XPRIZE has launched the three largest contests in its history: the $100 million Carbon Removal prize, the $101 million Healthspan prize and the $119 million Water Scarcity prize. An entrepreneur and engineer, Ansari became the first Iranian-born woman to travel to space in 2006; she self-funded a flight on the Russian Soyuz TMA-9 to the International Space Station. XPRIZE says its competitions have helped catalyze more than $31 billion in follow-on social and economic investment.

Since becoming CEO of Good360 in 2025, Cinira Baldi has led one of the nation's largest charities, overseeing an organization that connects surplus products from corporate partners with nonprofits serving communities in need. The No. 2 organization on Forbes' America's Top Charities 2025 list, Good360 has distributed more than $25 billion in donated goods through a network of more than 100,000 vetted nonprofits while helping reduce waste and strengthen disaster response. Previously a leader at Project HOPE and Mercy Corps, Baldi is guiding the organization's next phase of growth as demand for essential goods continues to rise.

54 | Founder & President, Sato Project

When Christina Beckles visited Puerto Rico for the first time in 2007, she ended her trip with a stray puppy named Boom Boom and a determination to save similar dogs (or “satos”) from the streets of Yabucoa and a place known as Dead Dog Beach. In 2011, The Sato Project was officially born, and in the years since Beckles’ organization has rescued, rehabilitated and rehomed more than 8,000 dogs. In 2023, she spearheaded Operation Sato, a high-volume spay, neuter and vaccination clinic in Puerto Rico that has since treated more than 4,500 dogs.

60 | Managing Director of Government Affairs & Public Policy, Steptoe

Leslie Belcher has spent nearly four decades shaping public policy from both inside and outside government. Today, she leads the government affairs and public policy practice at Washington, D.C.-based law firm Steptoe, where she is widely regarded as one of K Street's most influential lobbyists and a trusted expert on the House Republican Conference. In July, Belcher wrote an article for Reuters sounding the alarm about “institutional atrophy” and dysfunction within the legislative branch of government. Before joining Steptoe in 2007, Belcher worked for several members of Congress and also established the House Blue Dog Coalition, a caucus for fiscally conservative centrist Democrats.

64 | Investigative Journalist, Miami Herald

It is not a stretch to say that the world would not know about Jeffrey Epstein’s sex trafficking and abuse of young women without the work of Julie K. Brown. The veteran Miami Herald investigative reporter exposed Epstein’s wrongdoings in a series of stories in 2017 and 2018 that led to his arrest (and the arrest of his associate Ghislaine Maxwell). She has continued to give voice to Epstein’s victims through her reporting, and in 2026 she received a Pulitzer Prize Special Citation for the way her work has “reverberate[d] around the world.”

63 | CEO, Last Mile Food Rescue

Hunger is a logistics problem. Those are the words of Eileen Budo, who spent 28 years understanding procurement and supply chains at Procter & Gamble, and at age 57, decided to prove a point. In 2020, Budo joined Cincinnati, Ohio’s Last Mile Food Rescue and built a logistics platform that matches surplus food with recipient food banks and pantries based on their capacity and needs. It then dispatches volunteers through an Uber-style app to move donations from businesses. The organization says it’s saved 20 million pounds of food locally, but Budo—a onetime captain in the U.S. Air Force—is aiming her sights nationwide.

54 | Co-founder, President & CEO, Higher Heights for America

Glynda Carr co-founded Higher Heights for America to build the political power and leadership of Black women, creating a national organization dedicated to electing Black women to public office. Under her leadership, Higher Heights has helped elect Black women to Congress and the Senate—the Higher Heights PAC supported Angela Alsobrooks (D-MD) and Lisa Blunt Rochester (D-DE) in the 2024 election—while also helping increase Black women's representation in statewide executive offices, including the election of New York's first Black female attorney general, Letitia "Tish" James.

75 | Founder, Chair & CEO, Serica Initiative

After a career in global finance and investment management, Anla Cheng founded Serica Initiative, an Emmy Award-winning nonprofit dedicated to amplifying Asian American and Pacific Islander voices across culture, business, science and public life. Under her leadership, Serica has expanded its reach through award-winning films, storytelling and public programming, reaching millions while elevating AAPI perspectives and leadership. Cheng also serves as a trustee of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, bringing together leadership across finance, philanthropy and the arts.

67 | Founder & CEO, National Education Equity Lab

Leslie Cornfeld founded the National Education Equity Lab to bring college credit-bearing courses from leading universities into Title I high school classrooms (i.e, public schools serving lower income kids) at no cost to students. Since launching the organization in 2019, it has served more than 50,000 students across 34 states through partnerships with many of the nation's leading colleges and universities.........

© Forbes