The 10 people transforming emerging tech - including leaders from Google, Adobe, and Miro

Ajao's firm is helping HBCUs gain a foothold in venture capital, which has driven huge returns for endowments at universities like Harvard and Yale but hasn't been as accessible to many smaller schools. HBCUs punch above their weight — they make up 3% of all US colleges and universities but produce 20% of Black American college graduates, according to the United Negro College Fund — yet face chronic funding woes.

"Having been an immigrant twice now," he said, "it's always given me a lot of empathy for people who feel like the 'other.' It has been helpful for me as an investor and as an entrepreneur."

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Barreyat's BeReal had been downloaded over 53 million times as of October, with monthly downloads exploding from fewer than 1 million in January to 14.7 million in September, according to Sensor Tower. After a funding round in July, where the company was in the process of raising $85 million, its valuation grew to $600 million.

"No like, No followers, No ads, No filters, just what my Friends are doing, in the most authentic way possible," Barreyat, BeReal's CEO, said in a LinkedIn post.

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In August, YouTube announced that Coe would step in as YouTube's chief business officer to take over for Robert Kyncl. It's a key role in managing YouTube's relationship with the many creators on the platform, including music labels, TV studios, and individual creators.

Coe is a veteran Google sales executive who has served as the president of global customer solutions. She worked with medium and small businesses using Google's ad tools. This group accounts for more than half of Google's $200 billion ad revenue.

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In two years, Gonzalez helped form Activision Blizzard King worker advocacy group A Better ABK and publicly condemned leaders for their lackluster response to sexual assault claims. In 2021, Gonzalez resigned to put her well-being first.

She believes her public advocacy caught CWA's eye since gaming industry workers typically do not speak up because of nondisclosure agreements.

"I was in a space where I was like, 'Oh, my gosh, I have almost 10 years in this industry, and it's the same,'" Gonzalez said. "I was really tired. And so I was like, 'OK, I'm going to be someone who helps the movement.'"

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As the CEO and a cofounder of the virtual-whiteboard startup Miro, Khusid's past two years have been defined by explosive scale and demand. Miro's user numbers jumped from 5 million to 40 million between 2020 and October.

"Very few founders get to take their startups to the scale we've reached," he said. "And I need to keep upleveling my knowledge and leadership so that I can continue to steer the company forward instead of being a ceiling."

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The $10 billion startup's total users quadrupled to more than 20 million over the past 12 months. At the same time, its tools have become a staple for TikTok influencers and everyday users looking to organize their personal lives.

Kothari, a product exec turned jack-of-all-trades, has been instrumental in guiding Notion through its rapid growth.

"Notion has very much sort of become the default asynchronous collaboration platform," he said. "Our most exciting days are very much ahead of us."

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As the head of technology at the Connectivity Standards Alliance since 2019, LaPré works with the nonprofit to address Internet of Things connectivity issues. Under his leadership, the CSA launched its design-standards protocol, Matter, in October to help businesses simplify how they manufactured smart tech.

"I don't want to say that Matter will save the world," LaPré told Insider. "But I think there's big problems out there that Matter can really help to solve."

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Earlier this year, Orady's company achieved unicorn status when it raised $250 million at a $1.6 billion valuation. Investors in the company include a roster of professional athletes, including the tennis stars Serena Williams and Maria Sharapova and the basketball stars Stephen Curry and LeBron James.

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Parsons joined the design firm Adobe in 2020 to head the Content Authenticity Initiative. Launched as a partnership between Adobe, Twitter, and The New York Times, the Content Authenticity Initiative has grown into a community of 800 companies, nonprofits, and other institutions working to establish an industry for authenticating content.

"The first thing we had to do for this initiative was to make it as open as possible," Parsons told Insider. "We worked with journalists, content creators, publishers — the reason we're all huddled around these tables working together is because we all feel the urgency to solve the problem of disinformation."

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