social-change
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The Vocabulary Test: How The Wakeman Agency Turns Words Into Infrastructure
A small New York communications firm treats language like load-bearing architecture. For organizations working on contested issues, that changes what public relations is for.
Goodwin Simon studies the argument inside your head
The public opinion firm helps campaigns and causes understand why people hesitate. Its research follows the emotional friction between agreeing with an idea and acting on it.
Underground Makes Good Causes Hard to Ignore
A sheep farmer in a hazmat suit. Raspberries arranged like a valentine. Inside the San Francisco creative agency that gives public-interest campaigns something people can picture.
Elizabeth Roy
Elizabeth Clay Roy is the CEO of Generation Citizen, a national nonprofit that partners with schools to teach 6th-12th graders Action Civics - hands-on, project-based democracy. A Columbia-trained urban studies graduate who campaigned door to door in Boston before she could vote, she has built a career across grassroots organizing, government, and economic-mobility work, from co-authoring an urban planning guidebook in Bangalore to co-creating the Opportunity Index and leading TakeRoot Justice in New York. She frames her work through 'critical patriotism' and insists young people are 'partners and problem-solvers, not citizens in waiting.'
Change.org
Change.org is the world's largest online petition platform, letting anyone start a campaign, gather signatures, and pressure decision-makers on social, political, and consumer issues. Founded in 2007 by Ben Rattray, it now reports more than 580 million users worldwide. The platform operates as a public benefit corporation and, since 2021, is wholly owned by the nonprofit Change.org Foundation. Its stated mission is to empower people everywhere to create the change they want to see and to shift the balance of power between individuals and large institutions.
Ben Rattray
Ben Rattray is the founder and Executive Chair of Change.org, the world's largest platform for social change. He started it in 2007 with a borrowed $1,000 after his brother's coming-out reframed how he thought about bystanders and responsibility. What began as a social network for activists became a petition engine that has grown to hundreds of millions of users worldwide, turning ordinary signatures into pressure on corporations and governments. Named to TIME's 100 Most Influential People and Fortune's 40 Under 40, Rattray has spent his career trying to shift the balance of power between individuals and large institutions.