Let’s continue with the top five…
Melanie Perkins
Odds are, if you’ve ever taken a graphic design course or created a thumbnail for social media, you’ve used Canva. Entrepreneur Melanie Perkins began the Canva platform back in 2007 while still a student at the University of Western Australia, alongside co founders Cliff Obrecht and Cameron Adams. From her mother’s Perth loungeroom, the trio built what would become one of the world’s most influential design platforms, driven by a vision to make design simple and accessible for everyone.[1]
Their persistence is the stuff of legend. After more than 100 investor rejections, they turned Canva into a global powerhouse.[2] In 2025, under Perkins’ leadership, Canva reached a staggering US$42 billion valuation by J.P. Morgan, cementing its place as one of the world’s most valuable private technology companies.[3]
That achievement alone would be enough to earn Perkins a place on any list, but what makes her truly stand-out in 2025 is her commitment to using her success for good. Alongside Obrecht, she has pledged to donate the majority of their Canva stake to philanthropic causes through the Canva Foundation, focusing on poverty alleviation, education, and global equity.[4]
At the same time, Perkins is steering Canva into the future with bold product innovation. The company’s expanded Visual Suite integrates artificial intelligence, making design smarter, faster, and more collaborative, while positioning Canva as a serious challenger to global tech giants.[5]
Melanie Perkins is hot in 2025 because she proves that building a tech empire can go hand in hand with making the world a better place.
References:
Nataša Pirc Musar
In 2025, Slovenian President Nataša Pirc Musar distinguished herself as one of the few European leaders willing to confront powerful states over violations of international law.[6] While most European governments avoided direct criticism of Israel’s conduct in Gaza, she used her address to the United Nations General Assembly to call the situation genocide and to demand immediate international action to halt the humanitarian crisis.
Her speech was striking for its precision and its refusal to hide behind diplomatic caution. She named the United States and Israel for their human rights violations and condemned the paralysis of the UN Security Council in the face of mass civilian suffering.[7] She laid out the legal obligations of states clearly, without euphemism or political hedging.
Pirc Musar’s position aligns with Slovenia’s broader foreign policy trajectory. She reaffirmed Slovenia’s recognition of Palestine as a necessary step toward a viable two state solution, noting that her country had taken this stance early despite significant geopolitical pressure.[8] She warned that continued Israeli settlement expansion would make a Palestinian state impossible — a development she said Slovenia “would not allow”.[9]
She also placed the crisis in historical context, invoking the international community’s failures during the Holocaust, Rwanda, and Srebrenica:
“We did not stop the Holocaust. We did not stop the genocide in Rwanda. We did not stop the genocide in Srebrenica. We must stop the genocide in Gaza. There are no excuses anymore.”
What made her intervention even more notable was the contrast with many of her counterparts. In an international environment where most male leaders shrivelled at the prospect of confronting powerful allies, Pirc Musar stepped forward with the resolve they could not match.
Her willingness to speak boldly, assert legal principles, and challenge impunity is what earns her a place on this list. Respect.
References:
Dr. Asha de Vos
From the warm waters of the Northern Indian Ocean to the pages of a landmark new book, Dr. Asha de Vos has spent her career insisting that the ocean’s stories must be told by those who know its rhythms best.[10]
In 2025, she reached a new milestone with the Australian release of Ocean: From the Shore to the Abyss — a comprehensive exploration of marine life that distils decades of research into a work designed to bring the ocean’s complexity to a global audience.[11]
The authority behind that book was earned far from publishing houses. De Vos first came to international prominence after identifying the non migratory blue whale population of the Northern Indian Ocean — a discovery that overturned long held assumptions about the species and established Sri Lanka as a critical site for marine science.[12]
Her research identifying the deadly overlap between blue whale feeding grounds and Sri Lanka’s busiest shipping lanes helped elevate the issue to the International Maritime Organization, where she has been a leading scientific voice advocating for rerouting major shipping lanes to reduce ship strikes.[13]
Through Oceanswell, the marine conservation and education organisation she founded, de Vos has championed a principle she calls equitable ocean science — the idea that coastal nations must lead research in their own waters.[14]
Her mentorship programs have supported early career scientists, particularly women in Sri Lanka and the wider South Asian region, by providing training, research opportunities, and professional development.[15]
In 2025 Asha de Vos showed that a woman’s voice — grounded in science, shaped by experience, and rooted in the waters she calls home — can transform how the world understands and protects the ocean.
References:
Ana Kasparian
In 2025, Ana Kasparian stood out as one of the most fearless and unfiltered voices in American political media. After years as a central figure at The Young Turks, she entered the year with a reputation for sharp analysis, a confrontational edge, and a refusal to water-down her commentary to fit anyone else’s agenda. Her coverage of Gaza became one of the defining elements of her work.
While the majority of mainstream media commentary tiptoed around official narratives, Kasparian cut straight through them. She challenged statements directly, called out contradictions in real time, and refused to let false narratives pass unaddressed. Her segments were widely shared on social media because she didn’t dilute anything — she pushed back with clarity, evidence, and a level of moral force that made people stop and pay attention.
Her deep dives into the Epstein documents show the same relentlessness. She approached the material with seriousness, refusing to soften the implications or pretend the story is as benign as some reporters would have us believe.
She focused on institutional failures, elite networks, and the uncomfortable realities many outlets have avoided. Her commentary isn’t designed to be sensationalist — but the sparks her interviews throw off make them compelling as hell.
As an independent journalist, she is free from the obligations of advertiser loyalty, and she speaks with a clarity that cuts through the noise.
She is sassy, sharp, unapologetic, and unwilling to play by the unspoken rules that keep so much political commentary shallow and mendacious.
In a year defined by conflict, disinformation, propaganda, and institutional cowardice, Ana Kasparian stood out as someone who confronted power directly, spoke without fear — even when threatened — and delivered commentary with the kind of fire that made her impossible to ignore… making her hot in 2025.
Francesca Albanese
In 2025, Francesca Albanese became one of the most consequential and unignorable figures on the global stage. As the UN Special Rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories, she issued a landmark report — Anatomy of a Genocide — concluding that Israel’s actions in the occupied Palestinian territory met the legal threshold for genocide under international law. It was a finding rooted in international humanitarian law, international human rights law, and the Genocide Convention, delivered with clarity and backed by evidence — and it immediately altered both the global conversation and the course of her own life.
The response she’s faced has been unlike anything directed at a UN mandate holder in recent memory. Instead of attracting frank and fearless debate, the United States imposed financial restrictions that left her unable to access basic services — a measure normally reserved for people accused of serious criminal activity, not UN officials carrying out their mandate.
These restrictions, combined with travel limitations, disrupted her daily life and her ability to work. At the same time, she became the target of a sustained smear campaign by Israeli officials and affiliated voices seeking to discredit her professionally and press for her dismissal. The backlash spilled into her personal life as threats — explicit and implicit — became a constant presence. Through it all, she refused to yield.
Her composure in the face of retaliation became part of her public identity. She continued to speak, to write, to brief, and to insist on the primacy of international law even as the cost mounted. She did not dilute her opinion. She did not soften her language. She did not retreat into caution or apology. She stood her ground in the centre of a global storm.
Her work reverberated far beyond the halls of the UN. It caused public debate, informed parliamentary discussions, and became a reference point for people around the world who were trying to understand a year marked by distortion and denial.
For anyone unsure about who the true evil‑doers in this world are, they need only look to those who oppose this woman.
What sets Francesca Albanese apart is the way she carries herself while doing what she does. She shows unshakable courage without raising her voice, challenges oppressive powers while remaining composed, and projects strength without ever abandoning her femininity. That quiet confidence, expressed with her distinctly Italian sense of style, only amplified the power of her resolve.
For me, all of this is why she belongs at the top of this list. At a moment when international law revealed itself to be fiction, she remained steadfast — even when doing so carried real personal risk. When it would have been easier to retract her report and comply, she held her ground, with little support.
If I could nominate her for a Nobel Peace Prize, I would — out of personal recognition and respect for the integrity, bravery, and honesty she has brought to one of the most fraught issues of our time.
