Learn From 10 Hardworking Leaders Making The World Better For Our Kids

By Laurel Donnellan (Originally published at Forbes.com)

Compassionate leadership is using one’s head and heart to influence others, who, then in turn, influence others. Each year, Compassionate Leader’s Circle celebrates compassionate leaders across generations, sectors, and borders, shining a light on people who wake up every day and want to make the world better. Compassionate leaders can learn from their past, help and heal in the present, and inspire hope for the future. This year, we received over 200 nominations, and the selection process resulted in ten extraordinary people being chosen to represent this larger group and honored at an online ceremony earlier today. Here they are, in no particular order: 

One: Nancy Bosnoian 

Nancy Bosnoian is a Syrian immigrant, human rights advocate, and founder of End No Sleep, a global nonprofit transforming mental health by addressing sleep deprivation as a root cause of crises. At 11, she survived the shelling of Aleppo, carrying the weight of trauma most will never know. In 2025, she turned that experience into action, bringing sleep education and support to youth living in conflict, displacement, and poverty. Through End No Sleep, she has educated 20,000+ students, mobilized advocates in 25 countries, and expanded an AI-driven sleep health tool now accessible in 180 countries. Recognized by Harvard, Nasdaq, and the Clinton Foundation, Nancy does not simply empathize with trauma; she is building a system that lets vulnerable communities reclaim safety, rest, and resilience. Her vision is to share the support she once needed with millions worldwide. 

Two: Aparna Chennapragada

Aparna Chennapragada is Chief Product Officer for AI Experiences at Microsoft. She attended an engineering school in India, where she was one of three women in a class of 400, before moving to Texas to study at UT Austin. Now, in a world where only 19% of engineers are women, her global leadership team is currently at 50%. (PROGRESS!) Knowing this compassionate mother, has a seat at the table of one of the five top tech companies helps us feel more hopeful about the future of AI, since she puts people first in everything she does. Remember how we were all promised that technology would shorten our workweek, yet many of us are now working longer hours because of connectivity? Aparna and her team are working on products that can mitigate that problem, so we all have more time for health, families, communities, and hobbies. And you may be surprised to learn her hobby is doing stand-up comedy, which helps Aparna be more creative and brave at her day job, both qualities that are needed in our leaders more than ever. 

Three: Sheilah Mukholi Lutta

Sheilah Mukholi Lutta is a seasoned Special Needs Educator and Disability Inclusion Specialist, currently serving as Assistant Director at Kenya’s Ministry of Education – Directorate of Special Needs Education. She coordinates the Building a World of Play project by Clinton Health Access Initiative and the longitudinal study on Inclusive Early Childhood Education by The Action Foundation, advancing inclusive, play-based, and evidence-driven learning approaches. Her disability STEM collaborations have helped expand opportunities for girls with disabilities across Kenya.  Beyond her technical and strategic strengths, Sheilah is admired for her deeply compassionate leadership style, leading with empathy, active listening, and a genuine commitment to the dignity of every learner, family, and educator she works with. Her ability to mentor teams, nurture partnerships, and center on humanity in systems change makes her not only an effective leader but also a trusted and inspiring force in inclusive education.

One of the many things I admire about our next honoree is his unabashed honesty. When we first met, I asked him if he was always a compassionate leader. He said no, but then he agreed to share his personal, difficult story of the transformation from a leader to a compassionate leader on our podcast, so look for it in May. 

Four: Rick Milenthal

Rick Milenthal, CEO and Co-Founder of The Shipyard, one of the fastest-growing independent advertising agencies, is approaching mental health as both a moral responsibility and a business strategy. As AI-driven disruption and layoffs ripple across industries, creative professionals are facing a distinct kind of burnout driven not just by workload, but by existential uncertainty about their roles. Mental health in the creative sector has become a pressing leadership issue, and after the tragic loss of a member of The Shipyard community, Rick and his team made mental health a core leadership priority. Internally, that has meant embedding support into company policy and culture through free counseling access, expanded PTO, paid parental leave, hybrid flexibility, and an operating philosophy that treats balance as resilience. Employees consistently cite this commitment as a primary reason they stay, and clients view it as a differentiator. Externally, Rick and The Shipyard have supported marketing efforts for the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline and partnered with The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center on the $20 million statewide, groundbreaking SOAR Study into mental illness, addiction, and resilience.  

Our next two honorees both have very distinguished careers individually before they recently joined forces to make soulful and significant changes for the currently 80 million Americans, or one-third of adults with arrest records. They launched JUMP to help individuals, families, and communities affected by the justice system, which is often unjust. 

Five: Larry Miller

Larry Miller is the Founder of the Justice & Upward Mobility Project (JUMP), a national movement harnessing cultural influence to unlock education, employment, and economic mobility for youth and adults impacted by the justice system. He is also the current Chairman of the Jordan Brand Advisory Board, a division of Nike Inc. He has garnered international respect for his reputation as an inspirational leader who understands how to build innovative, cultural, and premium businesses in the world of sport and lifestyle, establishing the standard for athletic luxury footwear and apparel. His memoir, JUMP, co-authored with his daughter Laila Lacy, shares the organization’s name and tells the story of his journey from the streets of Philadelphia to prison and ultimately to leadership at Nike and the Portland Trail Blazers. 

Six: Ken Oliver

Ken Oliver is the President and CEO at JUMP.  Before his impressive career at the intersection of law, public policy, and philanthropy, Oliver spent 24 years in prison, including nearly a decade in solitary confinement. He successfully challenged the conditions of his confinement, securing an unprecedented settlement and his freedom through a landmark civil rights lawsuit in partnership with Stanford University and Mayer Brown. Oliver and his team are bringing together business leaders, policymakers, culture changers, and communities to drive sweeping, lasting change that gives people well-deserved second chances. A cornerstone of that work is confronting the very real problem of stigma and shifting narratives around people with records.  April is now designated as Fair Chance Month, a recognition of those who face and overcome many of the challenges associated with arrest records in the United States. 

Seven and Eight: Avanti Prabhakara and Vishwas Prabhakara

Vishwas and Avantika Prabhakara (or Vanti for short) are the married co-founders of Honey Homes, a home services membership that pairs homeowners with a dedicated team member to handle home improvement, repair, and maintenance. In a sector often characterized a gig-economy positions, Vanti and Vishwas have created a business model in which their handymen and handywomen are full-time W-2 employees, receiving health benefits, PTO, parental leave, and ongoing professional development. Vanti was previously a senior member of the Marketing teams at Opendoor, Zillow, and Trulia. Vishwas was COO at Digit, a consumer fintech helping people effortlessly save money and pay down debt, and the VP of Restaurants at Yelp. This husband-and-wife team founded Honey Homes to address their personal challenges in finding trusted help to get things done around the home over 15 years, across one condo and two homes. Now they get to provide the families of their customers and team members with the support and stability they crave. 

Nine: Farren Roper 

Farren Roper is the Spectrum and Belonging leader at Audible, where he drives initiatives to help every person, from every background, feel they truly belong and can bring their whole selves to work. In his role, Farren partners with leadership to cultivate trust, psychological safety, and a sense of belonging.  Rooted in his lived experience, resilience, and grit growing up in post-apartheid South Africa, Farren leads and lives with compassion, care, and courage. Farren demonstrates respect when navigating differing viewpoints and complex challenges. He fosters dialogue rooted in dignity and trust, modeling how to engage thoughtfully while maintaining shared purpose and understanding. His latest passion is harnessing AI for good and exploring how technology can enable better human outcomes. His personal motto is: “Lead with curiosity. Grow with purpose."

Ten: Shreyaa Venkat 

Shreyaa Venkat is the courageous and tireless founder & CEO of NEST4US, one of the world’s largest youth-founded nonprofits, harnessing the power of kindness and service to spark global change. She spearheads cross-sector impact through large-scale volunteer mobilization and multi-stakeholder partnerships to advance progress on 14 of the 17 United Nations Sustainable Development Goals through five far-reaching core programs. NEST4US has had a measurable impact over the last decade, showing the effectiveness and broad reach of this organization. Under her leadership, she and her team have mobilized over 9,000 volunteers who've generated at least $6.5M in service value, empowered more than 100,000 youth, redistributed more than 4M lbs of surplus food, created more than 125,000 kindness notes, assembled over 90,000 blessing bags, and expanded critical resource access for tens of thousands. Shreyaa bridges policy ambition with grassroots implementation grounded in compassion and shared humanity by catalyzing people-powered movements to drive magnified social change worldwide.

Our sponsors this year include Angle’s Inc., providing authentic event marketing; Canyon Ranch Wellness Resorts, where we provide programming; and our thought leadership partner, the Greater Good Science Center at UC Berkeley. If you want new tools for becoming a more compassionate and effective leader, go here.