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By addressing issues such as climate change, disabilities, mental health and elections, these social entrepreneurs are creating sustainable startups for lasting change. L ike many entrepreneurs, Maya Kuppermann created a tool she wishes she had herself in an earlier job. After spending hours applying for nonprofit grants—and then seeing how manual the process of analyzing data is for foundations that hand out money—she knew there was an opportunity to build better tech for the nonprofit space.
“This is a pretty slow-moving industry, and so there was just so much opportunity to even take software basics and really change the way that people work,” says Kuppermann, 28, who cofounded nonprofit tech firm Temelio with Ruthwick Pathireddy , 29. The duo make up two of the 30 young innovators on this year’s Forbes Under 30 2025 Social Impact list. She’s hardly the only one tapping personal experiences to build something new.
Inspired by her own diagnosis of Lyme disease at age seven, Olivia Abrams , 25, cofounded TiCK MiTT , a reusable tick removal solution. After a friend in college confided he wanted to die—during a year several other fellow students committed suicide— Jared Fenton , 29, founded The Reflect Organization, which provides college students a safe forum for discussion about mental wellness. And Adeola Ajani , 26, the CEO of Fem Equity, started the professional development company after discovering she was paid 40% less than the overall market rate and a male counterpart in one of her first jobs.
Another common theme on this year’s Social Impact list: New products or services that help those with disabilities, or help improve accessibility. Luke Buckberrough , 24, cofounded Glidance to help people who are visually impaired. Rebecca Rosenberg , 26, also wanted to help with visual impairment by starting ReBokeh Vision Technologies, an assistive tech option for people with low vision, a condition she has herself due to albinism.
Meanwhile, Nishit Bhasin , 24, and Lakshya Garg , 26, cofounded Incskill to improve the accessibility of websites and apps to people with disabilities, Anna Voelker , 29, founded SciAccess to advance disability inclusion in STEM education and research, and Abhinav Chawla , 29, and Hamza Shaikh , 28, cofounded Stabl, a digital health startup that lets anyone access physical therapy from the comfort of their own home. Then, there are the listmakers building new ways to help with the election process, particularly relevant at the end of a volatile presidential election year. They include Will Long , 28, who founded Numinar to combine data, AI and software to help political campaigns, particularly those of down-ballot candidates, engage voters.
Box the Ballot founder and executive director Daphne Frias , 26, meanwhile, collected more than 20,000 absentee ballots during the 2020 midterms to harness those ballots’ potential. As usual for this category, our 2025 list is also stocked with innovators coming up with new solutions for addressing mental health and diseases, climate change and environmental issues, and equity for those with fewer resources. Altogether, they have raised more than $100 million in funding as a category.
The Under 30 list spotlights funders and founders aged 29 or younger as of December 31, 2024 who have never before been named to a North America, Europe or Asia 30 Under 30 list. Following a public nomination process, each list is judged by a panel of industry leaders. For the Social Impact category, the 2025 list was judged by Jean Case , chairperson of the National Geographic Society and CEO of the Case Impact Network and Case Foundation; Cheryl Dorsey , president of Echoing Green, a global nonprofit that supports and invests in emerging social entrepreneurs; Abhi Ramesh , founder and CEO of Misfits Market, a direct-to-consumer online grocery marketplace focused on sustainability; and Randall Lane , chief content officer of Forbes.
Of those named to the final list, 56% identify as people of color and 44% are women. This year’s 30 Under 30 Social Impact list was edited by Jena McGregor, Alex Stuckey and Igor Bosilkovski. For a link to our complete Under 30 Social Impact list, click here , and for full 30 Under 30 coverage click here .
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