Most Impactful Visionaries Driving Change in Education and Student Empowerment – 2026
This edition recognizes a leader whose work challenges the traditional boundaries of education and redefines what it means to truly serve students. Buddy Harris exemplifies a rare combination of strategic clarity, deep compassion, and unwavering commitment to those most often overlooked by conventional systems. His journey reflects not only professional versatility but a profound understanding that education extends far beyond classroom instruction.
On Cover
Buddy Harris
Assistant Director of Operations (Expansion & Innovative Programming Leader) | New Leaf Organization
In the landscape of American education, where systems are often built for the majority and the margins are left to fend for themselves, certain leaders emerge not to work within the edges of change but to redefine where the center ought to be. Buddy Harris is one of those rare individuals whose career reads less like a résumé and more like a calling, a steady, purposeful journey driven by one enduring conviction: that every student, regardless of circumstance, deserves to be seen, heard, and given a genuine chance to succeed.
Rydhima Gupta
Founder of Upskill with Ridzi
In an era where education technology often prioritizes scale over substance, one educator stands apart by asking a fundamentally different question: How can technology amplify the human elements of teaching rather than replace them? Rydhima Gupta’s journey from classroom teacher to founder of Upskill with Ridzi represents more than a career transition. It embodies a philosophy that learning, at its core, remains deeply human work.
Sally Jones
Founder, SQS4KIDS
Some missions begin with anger. Others begin with grief. Sally Jones’s began with something quieter and far more enduring: a personal reckoning with her own childhood that refused to let her look away. That experience, and the determination it ignited, became the seed of SQS4KIDS a trauma-informed child protection program now poised to reach classrooms across the globe.
