Take Sondra Samuels, the co-founder, president, and CEO of the Northside Achievement Zone, a nonprofit collaborative that supports children, teens, and families in North Minneapolis. Last year, the organization launched WealthBuilds, an initiative to provide 1,000 students with a comprehensive program on building wealth, offering financial literacy education and seeding college savings accounts. Jaymes Black, CEO of The Trevor Project, is expanding access to lifesaving mental health resources for LGBTQ+ young people. In 2025, their organization partnered with the state of California to improve LGBTQ+-centered training for the state’s 988 National Suicide and Crisis Lifeline operators. And last year, Café Momentum founder and CEO Chad Houser won a James Beard Humanitarian of the Year Award in recognition of his years-long commitment to a unique vision: a nonprofit restaurant that offers 12-month paid internships and holistic services to formerly incarcerated teens ages 15 to 19.

Samuels, Black, Houser, and 11 additional individuals comprise the inaugural class of TIME Visionaries, a list highlighting leaders working to build a brighter future for children. These honorees are driving bold, systemic change across education, mental health, housing, economic opportunity, and more—helping ensure that kids grow up with the support and resources they need to succeed. When we sat down with our colleagues this winter to begin brainstorming potential candidates for this project, we found an abundance of examples of such leaders who, both within their communities and nationwide, were gaining traction.

The list also includes standout youth honorees working on behalf of their peers. Maegha Ramanathan, 18, founded the nonprofit Girls4Sports in 2021 as a high school freshman; the organization is now the world’s largest youth-led effort to combat gender inequality in athletics. Sarah Shelke, 17, leads Mind4Youth, a global mental health nonprofit with 170 chapters and more than 25,000 volunteers across 71 countries. And 14-year-old food allergy advocate Zacky Muñoz is working to make schools safer for children with life-threatening food allergies, helping to conceptualize, draft, and lobby for three bills introduced in the California legislature.

See the full list—and read interviews with each of the 2026 Visionaries—here.