Maya Penn
At 13, Maya Penn is the CEO of her own company – Maya’s Ideas. She makes eco-friendly clothing and accessories. She started her business at eight and had her profile in Forbes magazine by age 12. Oh, she also does these awesome animations like Malicious Dishes, about a restaurant where computer viruses go and meet up inside your computer. Not only that but she's also a computer genius and learned to take one apart and put it back together at age four.
Jack Andraka
When a friend of 17 year old Jack’s died from pancreatic cancer he was shocked to find out that the detection method used to detect that specific form of cancer is ‘a 60-year-old technique – that’s older than my dad.’ This didn’t sit well with him so he set about creating another method of detection. It's taken 4,000 tries but he’s not created, 'One small paper sensor that costs three cents and takes five minutes to run. This makes it 168 times faster, over 26,000 times less expensive, and over 400 times more sensitive than our current standard for pancreatic cancer detection.’ Nice work, kid.
Richard Turere
'Hi, I’m a millennial and I’m a monster,' Kelly starts out before listing the various news articles that have slagged off Generation Y over the past few years. 'See how far you can get into a trend piece about Millenials before the ‘e’ word (entitlement) comes up.' But as Kelly argues we're anything but. 'Remember 2008? Just as we were asked to buy our way into a system that same system was imploding and leaving them without any room. We’re a bunch of people that are mistrustful of a system that hasn’t particularly made room for them'.
Natalie Warne
Say you what you will about KONY 2012 and Invisible Children's Jason Russell, but the work 18-year-old Natalie Warne did for them was incredible. The teenager occupied an area in central Chicago, got hundreds of supporters to come and camp out with her for six days until Oprah Winfrey gave the group the recognition they were after to raise awareness of Joseph Kony child soldiers.
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Picture: Eugenia Loli
This article originally appeared on The Debrief.