CKay makes TIME magazine’s 2022 list of Next Generation Leaders

Today, TIME released the 2022 list of Next Generation Leaders, highlighting up-and-coming activists, innovators, artists and actors around the world.

The new list features a cover profile of Olga Rudenko, Ukrainian journalist and EIC of the Kyiv Independent, who speaks on her rise to the highest post of a relatively new media organization tasked with being the world’s primary source for reliable, English-language journalism on the war between Ukraine and Russia.

Of the 2022 Next Generation Leaders list, TIME Editor-in-Chief and CEO Edward Felsenthal writes: ”At TIME, our eyes are on the rising stars poised to shape the future….Our international cover features one of these leaders, Olga Rudenko, the enterprising 33-year-old editor in chief of the Kyiv Independent, a startup that has quickly become the world’s primary source for reliable, English-­language journalism on the war in Ukraine….The ­Independent—founded in November by journalists who left their previous employer after a scandal over editorial integrity—is a remarkable example of the bravery it takes to keep reporting on a brutal conflict that hits so close to home. TIME contributor Lisa Abend has been speaking with Rudenko since the first week of the Russian invasion, and we are thrilled to be able to bring the story of this enterprising editor and her colleagues to you.”  https://bit.ly/3w5xDGU

–See the full 2022 Next Generation Leaders list here: https://bit.ly/3MaeHMU

–See the international TIME covers here: https://bit.ly/3w1rPOF

THE 2022 TIME NEXT GENERATION LEADERS LIST INCLUDES:

Aespa,  19, 21, 21, 22, K-pop girl group

Bilal Baig, 27, Canadian actor and writer

Bolor-Erdene Battsengel, 29, Mongolian tech minister

CKay, 26, Nigerian singer

Deepica Mutyala, 32, American beauty entrepreneur

Jaz Brisack, 24,  American labor organizer

Jonathan Bailey, 34, British actor of Bridgerton fame

Maximillian Davis, 27, British design star

Olga Rudenko, 33, Ukrainian journalist and EIC of the Kyiv Independent

Rinzin Phunjok Lama, 30, Nepalese conservationist

TIME EDITORS ON THE 2022 NEXT GENERATION LEADERS: 

On Olga Rudenko: “The staff of The Kyiv Independent knew war was coming. They had spent long days in February reporting on an invasion that high-level sources had told them was imminent… In the days and weeks to come, the Kyiv Independent would become the world’s primary source for reliable, English-language journalism on that war… Those are high stakes for someone who never expected to be in charge… After an internship at a local paper, she moved to Kyiv in 2011, where she landed a job at the Kyiv Post, Ukraine’s only English-language newspaper at the time… Rudenko didn’t know about that prestige when, in 2011, she got a job as a lifestyle reporter at the paper’s recently launched Ukrainian-language website. All she knew was that she found the newsroom terrifying. Struggling to keep up with conversations in English, she felt overwhelmed. Rather than running away from her anxiety, she ran toward it.”

On the start of The Kyiv Independent, Olga Rudenko tells TIME: “We are starting this ambitious project that is based on values we really, really believe in, which is independent journalism and we are doing it at the same time as our country is fighting this war for survival.” https://bit.ly/3woxnlb

On Maximilian Davis: “For Maximilian Davis, fashion isn’t just a career choice—it’s part of his family legacy. growing up in Manchester, England, in a close-knit Trinidadian-Jamaican family, his sister and mother modeled, and his father studied fashion design. When he was 6, his grandmother taught him to sew on her industrial machine, which he used to design unique clothes—including a pair of trousers repurposed from a sweater… This foundation proved crucial this spring when Davis, 27, was named creative director of Salvatore Ferragamo…The appointment of a rising star in the design world signaled a fresh new chapter for the establishment brand and for an industry that has few Black executives.”

Davis tells TIME: “I think the best collections are the personal ones where people can feel a part of the story…If they can relate to something, it always translates.” https://bit.ly/3wpddru

On Jonathan Bailey: “After being scouted in a ballet class, he went to work for the Royal Shakespeare Company at the age of 7…He’s since become an accomplished stage actor, starring opposite Ian McKellen in King Lear and winning an Olivier Award for his performance in Company on the West End…Onscreen, too, he has appeared in a string of acclaimed series, from Broadchurch to shows by beloved creators Phoebe Waller-Bridge and Michaela Coel. But it was the role of Lord Anthony Bridgerton, in the show adapted from Julia Quinn’s Regency-era romance novels, that anointed him as a global star…To see Bailey now, as a wholly convincing heartthrob on one of the biggest platforms in the world, is a quietly radical thing, and an auspicious sign of where Hollywood is heading.”

Bailey tells TIME: “Straight people playing gay roles, winning awards for it, and then being told that they’re brave…which is so demoralizing.”https://bit.ly/3Nr2Vy3

On Bilal Baig: “Baig, who at 27 has already broken boundaries in the representation of queer, trans-feminine, Muslim identity on TV, started out in theater and was preparing to work in the nonprofit arts sector when the show was greenlighted… Empathy for kids who feel similarly alienated has driven their own work with youth, which they plan to continue by focusing on inclusion through the arts.”

Baig tells TIME: “I am really hungry to figure out how to continue to uplift other voices…Because if I start to feel like I’ve become the one person who needs to keep speaking about the nonbinary brown experience, the pressure becomes unbearable.” https://bit.ly/3yxIjQ8

On Aespa: “[T]he four stars of the K-pop girl group aespa have an important job to do—and they know the stakes. For one of the first times in their short career, they are performing for a live audience. And not just on any stage: the much hyped Coachella. Having launched in the thick of the pandemic in November 2020, aespa has only existed in a world in crisis. But there’s something that sets them apart: aespa also exists as four virtual avatars, each carefully crafted to match their human counterpart, in a fantastical metaverse, Now, they’re ready to prove they’re more than just what fans have seen on screens.” https://bit.ly/3PgADYz

On Deepica Mutyala: “When Deepica Mutyala partnered her beauty brand with Mattel to launch the first ever South Asian CEO Barbie doll—made in Mutyala’s image—she wanted to make sure it was authentic. Growing up in Sugar Land, Texas, she’d had to navigate both colorism within her South Asian community and Western beauty standards outside of it. (She recalls wearing blue contact lenses and highlighting her hair blond when she was younger, in an attempt to fit in.) And so the doll not only pairs a ‘power red’ pantsuit with Indian-style bangles and jhumkas—traditional South Asian earrings—but also has darker skin. “Whatever we can do to make people feel more seen,” says the 32-year-old entrepreneur.” https://bit.ly/3woxEEJ

On CKay: “Ekweani’s gamble has paid off and then some: now known as CKay, the singer-songwriter-producer is already one of the most successful African recording artists ever on a global scale. That’s largely because of the success of his 2019 song ‘Love Nwantiti,’ which broke out at the start of the pandemic as a social media hit and has taken several victory laps around the world, thanks to viral dances and remixes. The irrepressible song has garnered almost 2 billion views on TikTok and 500 million more on YouTube, and has charted in six continents, hitting No. 1 in India, Norway, and Switzerland.” https://bit.ly/3NaYcQE

On Rinzin Phunjok Lama: “Rinzin Phunjok Lama was 16 when he first saw a Himalayan snow leopard prowling the mountains near his home in northeastern Nepal—an encounter that changed his life. In the folklore of Lama’s Buddhist community, the snow leopard is a manifestation of the god of Nepal’s high mountain pastures, who appears on earth only when humans violate the natural order. In that moment, Lama says, he recognized that his homeland was in peril. Lama, now 30, has since dedicated his life to wildlife conservation. Unlike thousands of young Nepalese who leave rural areas in search of work, Lama returned to his home in Humla after graduating from college with a forestry degree. Even in this remote corner of Nepal, the effects of climate change are clear, with ancient water sources drying up and once snow-capped mountains left bare.… What makes Lama’s project unique is that it’s driven entirely by the people it serves.” https://bit.ly/39hHRLy

On Bolor-Erdene Battsengel: “In 2020, when Bolor-Erdene Battsengel would walk into work in Ulan Bator’s national parliament building, security guards would stop her to ask if she was a personal assistant or a janitor. She was neither—she was the youngest member of the Mongolian government’s Cabinet, appointed to help lead the nation’s digital transformation. The experience underscored just how difficult it is for young women in leadership…Hard work is what took Battsengel from a rural town on the Mongolian steppe to the center of government.” https://bit.ly/3NcyZFp

On Jaz Brisack: “A Rhodes scholarship to the University of Oxford can open doors to elite worlds—to a life spent in boardrooms and at gilded galas…At the time, she was a student at the University of Mississippi who also volunteered on union picket lines. Going to a fancy school to learn about organizing, rather than doing it, lacked appeal…After Oxford, Brisack didn’t vie for a Yale law degree like Clinton, or a cushy consulting gig like Buttigieg. Instead, she got a job at the Elmwood Avenue Starbucks in Buffalo, N.Y. A year later, she organized the first successful unionization among staff of a corporate-owned Starbucks store in the United States.” https://bit.ly/3PeDGk6

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