There are moments when leadership is measured not by force, but by what someone is willing to lay down.

Adam Gardner has spent more than three decades on the road as a touring musician. As a founding member of the American rock band Guster and co-founder of REVERB, he has also spent more than twenty years working on something most fans never see — the environmental cost of live music.

The future of work is often described as if everyone is already on the same path. But that is not how it looks in real life. More than 2.5 billion people around the world are still offline, and many more are connected without the skills, support or networks that can turn technology into something meaningful.

HP’s Future of Work Accelerator is where that gap starts to feel less abstract and more hopeful. This year’s 2026 cohort builds on a program designed to support organizations helping people prepare for jobs, careers and economic mobility in a world being reshaped by digital technology and AI

For more than 20 years, filmmaker Daniel Glick has been drawn to a certain kind of story. Not empty inspiration. But stories about people trying to heal, protect, restore and help.

There is a familiar choreography to digital advertising. A brand pays for attention. A consumer looks for the skip button. Everyone acts as if this is normal. Amy Williams, founder and CEO of Good-Loop, built her company on a different idea. Good-Loop is an advertising platform that helps brands like Nike, Ford and Quaker Oats, turn ad impressions into donations to nonprofits, while also helping improve media performance and reduce the carbon footprint of campaigns. Advertising, she believes, can create a moment of genuine exchange instead of interruption.

As president of Brady, one of the nation’s leading gun violence prevention organizations, Kris Brown has spent years thinking not only about how to reduce gun deaths, but also about how to confront the emotional numbness that now surrounds them.

In a city where restaurant reservations can take weeks and grocery stores overflow with options, hunger can feel like a contradiction. Yet across Los Angeles County, thousands of people struggle daily to access consistent, nutritious meals. Hollywood Food Coalition (HoFoCo), a nonprofit that has served meals in Hollywood for decades, is working to close that gap in a new way. For Arnali Ray, the organization’s Executive Director, and Linda Pianigiani, Director of Development and Communications, who helps lead community engagement and fundraising initiatives, that work is about far more than food relief. It is about building a more connected and dignified system of care.

Advertising veteran Greg Viljoen founded Bigger Than Me in Cape Town, South Africa, after years in the agency world convinced him that creativity could do far more than build brands. In a country where youth unemployment remains one of the most urgent challenges facing the next generation, he built the agency to focus not on purpose as performance, but on impact that can actually change people’s lives.

During Oscars week in Los Angeles, the industry gathers to celebrate craft. The Lumen Awards, presented by The Impact Lounge, are built to celebrate something else alongside it — the stories and people who can move culture and inspire action.

Every Monday at 5.30 pm, Jabari Hearn used to open a Zoom room and do something most corporate systems don’t make easy. He showed up for the people who needed help. Not a panel. Not a conference. Not a one-off talk. Just real “office hours” where marketers could ask the questions they were carrying alone.

The ritual became Monday Night Mentorship, a mentor-led community built to accelerate the advancement and impact of marketers of color — and it has just passed its five-year mark. It grew fast, powered by a diverse Board of Mentors and a simple promise: if you show up, you won’t be invisible.

Directed by Andrew Standon (‘Wall-E’, ‘Finding Nemo’) and starring Kate McKinnon, Rashida Jones, and Daveed Diggs, In the Blink of an Eye is a poignant, emotional drama that follows three stories spanning thousands of years, that intersect and reflect on hope, connection and the circle of life.

Mars has launched the Mars Impact Fund, a new enterprise-level philanthropic fund designed to make long-term, targeted cash investments in the communities and systems Mars depends on. The company has committed $85 million between 2025 and 2027, and expects to distribute at least $50 million annually starting in 2028.

Few living scientists have witnessed as much planetary change as the legendary  Sylvia Earle, who recently turned 90.

A former Chief Scientist of NOAA, leader of the first all-female aquanaut team in the 1970 Tektite II underwater habitat mission, National Geographic Explorer at Large, and founder of Mission Blue, Earle has logged more than 7,000 hours underwater across seven decades. She has led more than 100 expeditions and helped establish a global network of “Hope Spots”—critical marine areas identified for protection.

At 5 p.m., most people aren’t hunting for culinary inspiration. They’re trying to get something on the table fast, keep everyone fed, and avoid that familiar sense of guilt that comes with “good enough” dinner decisions. Renee Guilbault thinks that moment is where the food industry has quietly failed us. So she built The Open Food Company to fix it, starting with sauces that deliver real vegetables, real flavor, and radical transparency, without preservatives, fillers, or food-industry tricks.

What if the most powerful innovation lever in your company isn’t a new tool or a new org chart - but a new relationship with the diversity of minds that operate within it?

Most mental health systems still treat creativity like decoration, something you add after the real work is done.

Richard Casper has spent the last decade proving the opposite.

Casper is a Marine veteran who discovered songwriting “could possibly save my life.” That realization set him on the path to co-founding CreatiVets, a Nashville based nonprofit that uses art and music education to help veterans heal, reconnect, and build community. CreatiVets started in July 2013, serving nine veterans in its first year. Today, it supports more than 1,200 veterans annually through programs across 15 states and Puerto Rico.