Most Important People of 2018

Though Salesforce.com Inc. is not typically the first name that comes to mind when consumers think about big Silicon Valley tech companies, the cloud-based software company, which reported more than $10 billion in sales in fiscal 2018, is a technology powerhouse. The founder and co-CEO of San Francisco’s largest private employer, Marc Benioff, has had a banner year, opening his $1.1 billion Salesforce Tower, the city’s tallest building. He also purchased Time magazine for $190 million in cash. A coder by training who spent 13 years at Oracle, a company he now competes against, the big-talking executive is easily on the top shelf of the most influential executives in the U.S. tech industry.

On Jan. 1, Brazil will have a new president who has been compared to U.S. President Donald Trump for the way he used fiery and controversial rhetoric to drum up a wave of populist support to win the presidency. Bolsonaro used Brazilians’ frustration over rampant street crime, political corruption, and the faltering economy to become the leader of South America’s largest country. Now the former army captain, who has spent 20 years as a congressman, must show he can move beyond courting controversy with incendiary comments (such as those directed against gays, black Brazilians, and women) and try to solve his country’s economic problems.

With just two previous films under his belt, director and producer Ryan Coogler burst onto the scene in 2018 with “Black Panther,” the blockbuster Africa-centric Marvel Comics superhero story starring Chadwick Boseman, Lupita Nyong’o, and other major performers of color. The movie became the highest-grossing film of 2018. Arguably, “Black Panther” is not Coogler’s best film — his “Fruitvale Station,” about the officer-shooting death of Oscar Grant in San Francisco in 2009, won a Sundance Grand Jury Prize in 2013. But “Black Panther” is likely to make an impact at the 91st Academy Awards in February. In addition to working on the inevitable “Black Panther” sequel, Coogler spends some of his time on Blackout for Human Rights, a social activist collective he founded to highlight issues facing African Americans.

Netflix continued to dominate online streaming in 2018, growing its global memberships to 137 million by the end of September, from 109 million the same time a year ago. This has made co-founder and CEO Reed Hastings the undisputed king of online television and movie streaming content. This year, Hastings continued to lure more major talent to produce original Netflix content, including the Coen Brothers’ “The Ballad of Buster Scruggs,” and Mexican director Alfonso Cuarón’s deeply personal, critically acclaimed film “Roma,” which could earn Netflix its first Oscar nod. Under Hastings’ leadership, Netflix is disrupting the way movies are released. But challenges lie ahead. Other content providers such as Disney have threatened to take content off Netflix and Netflix might be forced to invest heavily in original content.

Although he is regarded by some as the greatest basketball player of all time, LeBron James can conjure mixed feelings for Ohio sports fans. The all-time NBA playoffs scoring leader, four-time MVP Award winner and two-time Olympic gold medalist rose to fame playing for the Cleveland Cavaliers only to ditch his home-state team for the second time this year. The move to the Los Angeles Lakers made splashes not only in sports media. James’ reasoning, his personal costs, his choice of the Lakers, were analyzed over and over for months. Today, many are still wondering how James’ decision will play out, with former Lakers stars Magic Johnson and Kobe Bryant recently expressing concern that the team is relying too heavily on James.

Following contentious Senate hearings and allegations of sexual assault, Brett Kavanaugh was appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court in October, nudging the nation’s highest judicial body further to the right. Detractors complained about the way Republicans were able to replace Associate Justice Anthony Kennedy, viewed as the court’s centrist, with a conservative judge. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell had orchestrated a successful campaign to block Merrick Garland, President Barack Obama’s nominee to replace the deceased Associate Justice Antonin Scalia, a conservative. McConnell based his decision on the argument that Supreme Court vacancies should not be filled in the middle of a presidential term when the Senate is controlled by a different party than the president’s. With Kavanaugh’s ascent, the nation’s top court now skews to the right and the Senate and White House still maintain power to appoint a new justice should a vacancy comes up.

In what could mark a significant cultural shift, Kendrick Lamar was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for music in April for his 2017 hit record “DAMN.” The Compton, California, rapper not only became the first hip-hop artist to win the coveted prize, but also the first performer outside of classical or jazz music to receive the award. The Pulitzer Prize board commended Lamar for producing a “virtuosic song collection … capturing the complexity of modern African-American life.” The album touches on broad humanistic issues through the lenses of American racial inequality and black American self-reflection. Jurors of the prize reportedly debated the merits of considering rap music and concluded that rap deserves recognition as a serious art form and an artistic medium for social criticism and dissent.

Mexico elected as president Andrés Manuel López Obrador, a leftist who — depending on who you ask — will reduce the country’s crime and corruption and help the nation’s poor, or turn Mexico into a failed state like Venezuela by scaring off foreign investments. Under a three-party coalition, the 65-year-old former Mexico City mayor won a decisive victory with more than half of the popular vote. López Obrador was sworn in Dec. 1, replacing Enrique Peña Nieto, a deeply unpopular president who was perceived to be kowtowing to U.S. President Donald Trump.

Six years ago, Nora Lum was just a young New York City millennial jumping from one odd job to the next, hanging out with friends, and dabbling in rap music. In 2012, an amateur video of her song “My Vag” (a raunchy but playful response to American rapper Mickey Avalon’s “My Dick”) went viral. When her publicist employer caught wind of it, Lum was fired immediately. Skip forward to 2018: Lum – who goes by the stage name Awkwafina – has released two rap albums, including this year’s “In Fina We Trust,” and has appeared in two films this year: “Ocean’s 8” and “Crazy Rich Asians.” Now the Brooklyn resident is heading to Comedy Central to produce a half-hour scripted series based on her life as a young Asian woman born and raised in Queens..

It has not been a good year for French President Emmanuel Macron, who has been labeled “the president of the rich.” The leader of the European Union’s second-largest economy is struggling to meet debt-reduction goals outlined by the EU. Meanwhile, 18 months into his administration, Macron is facing grassroots protests and rioting sparked by his plan to increase the consumer fuel tax starting Jan. 1, a decision he has since suspended. Macron’s recent warning about the “dangers” of nationalism was widely perceived to be a reference to presidents Donald Trump of the United States and Vladimir Putin of the Russian Federation.

Angela Merkel has been chancellor of Germany since 2005, and as leader of Europe’s largest economy, she was one of the most powerful people in the world in 2018. Merkel, who has announced she will step down as chancellor in 2021 rather than seek a fifth term, navigated her country through the global economic crisis of 2009 by implementing unpopular austerity measures and using Germany’s economic clout to call for similar measures across the European Union. Merkel was praised globally for her open-door policy for asylum seekers flowing into Europe from the Middle East, a policy that angered the country’s far right. To save her coalition government from collapse, Merkel pulled back on the policy.

Special counsel Robert Mueller may or may not have the fate of U.S. President Donald Trump in his hands, but if he does he has been running a tight ship to avoid leaks, only carefully disseminating information to the public as needed. In order to avoid influencing the November midterms, Mueller’s team was unusually quiet about the investigation into alleged Russian meddling in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. But now, the Mueller team is expected to be more vocal in the last weeks of 2018, even possibly wrapping up the investigation before the new Congress is sworn in on Jan. 3. On Dec. 4, Mueller’s team filed a sentencing memo recommending that former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn serve little to no time in jail for making a false statement to the FBI. This suggests Flynn provided important information related to the investigation in return for leniency. Mueller, a Republican, may be the greatest threat to Trump’s presidency because his work could lead to impeachment proceedings.

Depending on who you ask, Elon Musk is a brilliant innovator who will lead the world to a greener existence, dig superspeed rapid transit tunnels under cities, merge human brains with artificial intelligence, and colonize Mars. Critics argue Musk is a modern day P.T. Barnum who has extracted billions from capital markets by selling his lofty ideas while becoming the billionaire owner of five Bel Air homes. In 2018, Musk’s public image was tainted when he suggested in a tweet that a rescue diver trying to save a youth soccer team trapped in a cave in Thailand was a pedophile after the diver chided Musk’s own plans to design a submarine to rescue the boys. In another misstep, Musk suggested in a tweet that he would take his electric car company Tesla private at $420 a share, drawing the ire of the Securities and Exchange Commission for making false and misleading comments. Musk also had to pay $20 million for his mistake.

Not that long ago, Microsoft was the boring tech company whose primary products were a desktop operating system and office document software. The products could not compare with with Apple’s sleek, intuitive software/hardware virus-free environment. Today, under the leadership of Satya Nadella, who replaced Steve Ballmer in 2014, Microsoft has rebounded so strongly that its market valuation runs neck-and-neck with Apple. Reasons for Microsoft’s rebound are various, including adding more capacity to its mobile operating systems, offering a line of enticing tablet devices, and expanding its cloud-computing business.

Eman al Nafjan, a Riyadh-based blogger and Saudi women’s rights advocate, was detained earlier this year by Saudi Arabia authorities. She remains in custody and is believed by rights groups to have been beaten and tortured. Al Nafjan is not the only woman to have been arrested in Saudi Arabia recently after advocating for women’s rights. Her online following and ability to write in Arabic and English — and her courage to do so from inside the country — helped her to reach a larger international audience. Saudi Arabia has been in the news a lot lately, especially following the murder of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi, who incurred the ire of Saudi leadership because of his advocacy for women like al Nafjan.

At just 29, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has become the youngest woman ever elected to the U.S. Congress and one of the youngest U.S. federal lawmakers in history. The representative-elect for New York’s 14th congressional district could be a rising voice from the left on Capitol Hill, despite making a few gaffes even before being sworn-in. From her savvy social media communications skills to calling for lawmakers to stop using unpaid interns, the Bronx-born Ocasio-Cortez, who defeated Democratic Caucus Chair Joe Crowley in the primary, seems to be coming out of the corner swinging. Ocasio-Cortez will try to persuade lawmakers to back her calls for the Green New Deal, which aims to move the country toward greener energy sources and help move forward the Medicare for All proposition that is promoted by some, but not all, Democrats.

Beto O’Rourke, the Democratic U.S. representative for the 16th congressional district of Texas, lost his bid to replace Republican Sen. Ted Cruz by fewer than 3 percentage points. In the widely watched race that cost $103 million and was the most expensive Senate campaign in history, Democrats were hoping to turn deep red Texas blue. But O’Rourke is still young (at 46 he is younger than the average Congress member by more than a decade), and considering he came so close to defeating the Texas Republican senator, it is likely we will hear more from him. A Harvard CAPS/Harris poll this month found that O’Rourke is considered to be one of the top Democratic contenders for the White House in 2020.

Naomi Osaka’s name was known only to followers of professional women’s tennis until September, when the 20-year-old became the first Japanese player ever to win a U.S. Grand Slam tournament. Furthermore, it happened against one of the greatest players of all time, Serena Williams. Osaka’s incredible victory was partially overshadowed by a heated and controversial dispute between Williams and a chair umpire, but that row only helped to raise awareness of Osaka’s victory to a larger audience. The daughter of a Haitian father and Japanese mother, Osaka has spent most of her life in the United States but represents Japan on the tennis courts.

By a vote of 202-32 in the House of Representatives, the first woman to lead a political party in Congress was elected once again to be the Democratic Party’s leader in the House and likely the next House speaker. Nancy Pelosi, who has represented California’s 12th congressional district (located entirely within the city and county of San Francisco) since 1987, is widely regarded as one of the most effective congressional leaders in modern times. Perhaps owing to that, she is also one of the most vilified by many Republicans. Now, after the midterm election results put the Democrats back into a House majority for the first time since 2010, Pelosi faces a second vote of all House members in early January. Though Democrats have a majority, Pelosi has yet to gain the support of all her party’s members. Pelosi had previously held the speaker position from 2007 to the start of 2011.

Regarded by some as possibly the greatest college football coach in history, University of Alabama head man Nick Saban started the year by notching his sixth championship, fifth in the last nine years, when the Crimson Tide beat the Georgia Bulldogs. Saban, a former Miami Dolphins head coach, will begin his quest for a seventh championship on Dec. 29, when top-ranked Alabama plays Oklahoma in the 2018-19 College Football Playoffs. Saban, who famously lost a chance to sign Drew Brees (currently the quarterback for the New Orleans Saints) to play for the Dolphins, could reportedly return to professional football next year as head coach of the Green Bay Packers.

Space Exploration Technologies Corp., better known as SpaceX, was founded by billionaire engineer and entrepreneur Elon Musk in 2002 as part of his vision to send people to Mars. But while Musk is generally busy overseeing his electric car company Tesla, it is President and Chief Operating Officer Gwynne Shotwell who runs the day-to-day operations at the Hawthorne, California-based private space transportation company. A mechanical engineer and applied mathematician by training, Shotwell ditched her nascent career at automaker Chrysler to enter the aerospace field in the late ’80s. This year, under the guidance of Shotwell, SpaceX further pushed the envelope and caught the world’s attention with its recent rocket launch. The rocket delivered and successfully launched a record-breaking 64 satellites — from 34 companies and organizations in 17 countries — into orbit.

While President Donald Trump has many critics, his base remains loyal to him, and his latest approval rating has hovered in the low 40s throughout 2018, according to the RealClearPoltics polling data index. Though such approval ratings are not great for a president only in his second year, they do not indicate a deep unpopularity. There are many theories why the president seemingly garners the approval that he does, but perhaps the simplest explanation is Trump speaks the GOP’s language of tax cuts, federal deregulation, a defense of gun ownership rights, and is a hardliner against illegal immigration.

Facebook has been under assault this year, from accusations that its platform empowers hate speech to claims that its technology allows employers to discriminate against job applicants. Another blow to the world’s largest social media network this year came from Christopher Wylie. The Canadian researcher-turned-whistleblower exposed a massive Facebook user data-mining operation by voter-profiling company Cambridge Analytica. Facebook enabled the company, at the behest of wealthy and politically active conservatives, to harvest private data from tens of millions of account holders. Some claim that may have helped Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign.

Chinese President Xi Jinping has become Trump’s primary global-trade adversary. Earlier this month during the G20 meeting in Argentina, the two leaders appeared to have come to some kind of temporary truce amid an escalating trade war. In addition, Xi has emerged as China’s most powerful modern leader, consolidating power as Chinese lawmakers voted in March to abolish presidential term limits. He has cracked down on corruption, as well as his adversaries. Xi also has advanced China’s Belt and Road Initiative, the country’s largest infrastructure project endeavoring to link 76 nations across four continents.

It has been a tough year for the co-founder and CEO of Facebook. The social media giant is grappling with criticism and public scrutiny over its abuse of user data. Many accuse the world’s largest social media platform of undermining democracy. Over a third of the world’s population — 2.27 billion people — are active monthly Facebook users. Earlier this year, journalists exposed how members of Myanmar’s military used Facebook to broadcast anti-Muslim propaganda to the country’s 18 million internet users aimed at ginning up oppression of the country’s Muslim Rohingya minority group. In April, Zuckerberg testified before the Senate Commerce and Judiciary committees over voter-profiling company Cambridge Analytica’s massive Facebook data-mining operation used to help Trump’s presidential campaign in 2016.