She's earned a reputation among the digerati as someone who has intuitively understood where all this social-media stuff is going--and left The New York Times to help create a platform to share rich media with the cloud.

Davis connects corporate philanthropy efforts with a young generation more passionate about grassroots activism than with wearing awareness ribbons from faceless foundations.

He has created award-winning ads and directed feature films, but lately he has been making short films for the likes of the Clinton Global Initiative, TED, the Council on Foreign Relations, and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

Marcel Melanson didn't have it easy growing up in Inglewood, California. His father was in and out of his life, his mom struggled with drug abuse, and his brother died at an early age. "I wanted a sense of belonging, a sense of family," he says. "The streets were an easy place to turn." But rather than join a gang, he found a different surrogate clan: firefighters. "A lot of people say they joined the fire department to help people," Melanson says. "I joined to help myself."