6 people making a real impact in their fields in 2026

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In a year defined by rapid change, the people making the biggest impact are not always the ones making the most noise. Across business, technology, science, culture and public life, a new group of leaders and innovators is turning bold ideas into measurable progress. These 6 individuals stand out for the influence they are having in their fields, and for the work that could shape what comes next.

Sanya Bari asks a different question about love: Where are you loving from?

At nine years old, sitting in the back seat of her family’s car, Sanya Bari made an announcement. She was going to figure out how to love without getting hurt, and then she was going to teach it to everyone. She had no language for what she meant. The question ran through the rest of her life anyway.

It led her into psychology and more than a decade of clinical practice as a licensed psychotherapist. It also produced an uncomfortable discovery. She could understand a pattern intellectually and still repeat it the moment she was emotionally activated. Insight, she found, did not reliably survive pressure.

She stayed stuck there without answers until a moment of surrender. What she understood then was that it is not what you do in love that matters so much as where you are loving from, and that this decides whether an act of love will hurt you or free you. The GROT Check, a real-time discernment tool that came through that insight, released the codependencies that had trapped her.

The rest followed from a single principle: to know where you are loving from, you have to build a relationship with yourself that emulates the one you want from other people. After three years of advanced study in Spiritual Psychology at the University of Santa Monica, that became the Love Clarity Method, which brings psychological, emotional, somatic, and spiritual dimensions together and makes something abstract and elusive clear and actionable.

“The problem is not always what we do in love,” she says. “It is where we are loving from.” Her forthcoming book, The Love Clarity Method: How To Stop Losing Yourself in Love, is being sent to publishing houses now. Its promise: you do not have to leave your relationship to stop leaving yourself inside it.

S. Robert Rozbruch, MD brings rare expertise to limb lengthening and reconstruction

Some orthopedic problems arrive with a discouraging verdict attached: nothing more can be done. Limb lengthening and complex reconstruction is one of the few fields built to look at that verdict differently, and it remains a specialty with relatively few dedicated experts.

S. Robert Rozbruch, MD, has spent his career in that space. A Professor of Clinical Orthopaedic Surgery at Weill Cornell Medical College, he founded the Limb Lengthening and Complex Reconstruction Service at the Hospital for Special Surgery in 2005 and now serves as its Chief Emeritus. In 2022 he founded and is the Director of the hospital’s Osseointegration Limb Replacement Center, where he continues to see and treat patients as an attending orthopedic surgeon.

His interest took shape early in his surgical career, drawn to complex cases in both adults and children that others had described as unsolvable. Over roughly 25 years, he has performed thousands of limb lengthening and reconstruction procedures while teaching fellows and residents, lecturing internationally, and publishing hundreds of peer-reviewed papers along with books and book chapters.

What sets his approach apart, he explains, is range. Treating patients across the full spectrum of reconstruction, from childhood through adulthood, has given him a broad perspective when building a treatment plan for each individual. His practice has continued to evolve over that time, integrating newer techniques and approaches to problems that resist standard solutions.

“I enjoy being an expert in an area that does not have many experts,” he says, describing work that rests as much on human connection as on surgical skill.

For Rozbruch, the appeal has stayed constant. He is drawn to the difficult cases, the ones others have set aside, and to the chance to improve mobility and quality of life for the patients who come to him looking for a plan that others had told them did not exist.

Lauren-Ashleigh Whitaker on pursuing more without losing yourself

Ask a room of high achievers who they are, and many will answer with what they do: the title, the sport, the company, the next goal.

For Lauren-Ashleigh “L.A.” Whitaker, that distinction between who we are and what we do, sits at the heart of nearly two decades of work.

A Licensed Therapist, Mindset Coach, and founder of Sea-Change Health & Wellness, L.A. works with adolescents, adults, athletes, entrepreneurs, executives, parents, and other high performers. Her approach is rooted in seeing the whole person; not simply a diagnosis, role, or performance.

What also sets her work apart from others, is that she is both a therapist and a mindset coach, not one or the other. Therapy allows her to help people understand and work through the experiences, beliefs, fears, and patterns that shaped them; mindset coaching helps them turn toward what comes next, who they want to become and what they want to pursue.

Her work bridges mind and body, logic and emotion, strength and vulnerability, performance and authenticity.

“Sometimes the biggest limits in our lives are the ones we’ve unknowingly placed on ourselves,” L.A. says.

Her whole-person, outside-the-box approach has led to recognition as an award-winning therapist and influential entrepreneur, as well as opportunities as an author and speaker. But according to L.A., some of her greatest sources of pride are more personal: being a wife and a mom, and watching the people she works with step into lives that once felt out of reach.

The people, their stories and aspirations are part of her why.

L.A. believes deeply in working hard, pursuing excellence and her daily mantra of: Faith over Fear. The bigger question for herself, and her clients isn’t simply, “What more can I achieve?” It’s, “Who could I become if I stopped letting fear, old stories, and self-imposed limits decide what is possible for me?”

That is the work L.A. is here to support: helping people discover what becomes possible when they understand who they are, recognize their strengths and worth, believe they are deserving of what they want, and stop allowing fear to decide how far they can go.

Because sometimes the biggest change isn’t becoming someone new. It’s finally seeing what was possible for you all along.

Mikala Everson built Granny’s Bakery around the people who walk through the door

A bakery is one of the few businesses people walk into on the best days of their lives. Birthdays, weddings, the cake for something worth marking. It is also where somebody stops on an ordinary Tuesday for coffee and a familiar face. Both of those matter equally to the person who owns Granny’s Bakery in Celina, Texas.

Mikala Everson was 21 when she opened it. She had been baking since childhood, learning in the kitchen alongside her family, and that early love of feeding people never really left. She worked in the culinary industry through high school and went on to the Culinary Institute of America, where she built the technical foundation. What she learned there, she says, is that food is never only about what reaches the plate. It is about hospitality, connection, and celebration.

That belief shaped what she built. Granny’s hosts classes, parties, and community events alongside the daily counter trade, and the bakery has been part of birthdays, weddings, fundraisers, and everyday moments for families across Celina. The community has returned the favor, naming it Best Bakery for three consecutive years through Best of Prosper and Celina, and the Celina Chamber of Commerce named it New Business of the Year in 2023.

She is candid that ownership taught her what the culinary side never could, and that harder seasons made her a better leader. But those seasons are not the reason she does it. Her “why,” as she puts it, has always been people: creating opportunities for her team, serving her community, giving someone their first chance in the industry.

“You don’t have to sacrifice who you are in order to be successful,” she says. A business that is profitable and ambitious while still being led with heart is the whole of what she is after.

Gita Blakeney Saltus built a luxury floral brand on business discipline, not floristry

On an island where much of the economy runs on hospitality, weddings, and international visitors, the standard for luxury service is set by a small number of businesses that get the details right every time. Building one of them requires more than artistry. It requires the operating discipline to source perishable goods across an ocean and still deliver something flawless on the day.

Gita Blakeney Saltus is Co-Owner and Managing Director of Flowers by GiMi, a luxury floral and event design company in Bermuda. Her professional career spans more than four decades across executive leadership, business development, hospitality, and nonprofit management. She is not a florist by trade, and she says so plainly. What she brings instead is strategic leadership, refined aesthetic judgment, and decades of operating experience.

She founded the company in 2008 with her husband, Gary, after seeing demand in Bermuda’s hospitality and luxury event sectors that was not being fully met. Between them they brought more than 40 years of combined experience in management and hospitality. The aim was never another flower shop. It was a brand that paired world-class design with service to match.

The island presents particular obstacles: supply chain breakdowns, rising freight costs, economic swings, and the difficulty of importing highly perishable products. Their response was to strengthen supplier relationships, refine operations, and diversify services rather than compromise on quality.

The company has won 14 Best of Bermuda Awards, including in 2026, along with a WeddingWire Couples’ Choice Award. Its work spans engagements, weddings, anniversaries, births, and celebrations of life alike, often for multiple generations of the same family.

Her advice to young entrepreneurs is characteristically direct: “Build your reputation before you build your brand.” Success, she adds, is not achieved overnight but earned through consistency, integrity, resilience, and an unwavering commitment to excellence.

Noel D’Avy: Making high-quality trauma care reach the people who need it most

In much of the mental health system, the people with the most complex needs are often assigned the least experienced clinicians.Because so many new therapists are the ones hired by community mental health agencies, where they are just beginning their training, there is a gap in specialty and quality of service. Noel D’Avy has spent her career working against that pattern. A Licensed Professional Counselor and the owner and clinical supervisor of Creative Path Therapy in Arizona, she has built a practice around a belief that sounds simple but is surprisingly rare: the highest-quality trauma care should reach the people who need it most, not only those who can afford it.

Her path to the work was shaped by what she witnessed early on. Training and working inside community agencies, she saw how often the system leans on beginning therapists to hold profound complexity, how quickly good clinicians burn out, and how easily low-income families fall through the gaps. Rather than accept that as inevitable, she went looking for another way.

What sets her apart is a conviction that the answer to disconnection is connection. Noel reaches out consistently to schools, shelters, community centers, and fellow counselors, building partnerships around a shared mission of access to quality care. The clearest example is her ongoing collaboration with Maggie’s Place, a women’s shelter, where Creative Path now provides regular trauma-informed art therapy groups, individual therapy, and staff training across several homes. She calls that partnership her single proudest accomplishment.

Her approach to trauma therapy is embodied and creative, drawing on Expressive Art Therapy, EMDR, Internal Family Systems, Sand Tray, Sensorimotor, and Eco-Therapy. Over the years she has watched women who carried deep pain arrive at a quiet, steadying realization that they can trust again, enjoy their lives, expand into their values, and finally feel at peace with themselves. This fall she is opening a second location in downtown Phoenix, growing both her team and the reach of that mission, because, as she puts it, we do better together.