2024 Impact Report

Just months after October 7, Palestinian entrepreneur Aziz Abu Sarah sat down with Israeli peacemaker Maoz Inon at TED2024 for a powerful conversation on peace, one which highlighted their shared experiences. It has since become the third most watched TED Talk of 2024, with over 2 million views and listens. As a result, Aziz and Maoz were invited to Verona, Italy, to speak with Pope Francis in front of a crowd of 13,000 people. Afterwards, Pope Francis tweeted, “Peace will never grow out of mistrust, walls or weapons pointed at each other.”

Farwiza Farhan has dedicated her life to protecting Indonesia’s lush tropical rainforests, especially the Leuser Ecosystem in Sumatra — the last place on earth where the Sumatran rhino, tiger, elephant and orangutan roam together in the wild. Becoming a TED Fellow in 2021, she says, has greatly amplified the visibility of her work. That year, a TEDster nominated her for the Pritzker Genius award; in 2022, she was named to the TIME100 Next list; and this year, she received the Ramon Magsaysay Award, known as “Asia’s Nobel Prize.” All helping her mission to make the Leuser rainforest as well known as the Amazon or Congo Basin.

Laura Indolfi has dedicated her career to an ambitious goal: making pancreatic cancer a curable disease. As the cofounder and CEO of PanTher Therapeutics, she’s transforming the way we treat this devastating disease, by delivering high-dose treatment directly to the tumor site, instead of traditional chemotherapy — maximizing effectiveness while minimizing harm. Laura says receiving the TED Fellowship early in PanTher’s journey amplified their work on a global scale, putting their innovations in front of an influential audience. In August, PanTher reached a major milestone with FDA approval to proceed on a study of their lead product. With this clearance, PanTher is one step closer to realizing its vision.

At just 21, Usman Riaz played TEDGlobal 2012, showing how he mastered his unique guitar style by learning on the internet. The platform paved the way for his next endeavor: cofounding Mano Animation Studios. Usman has spent more than a decade making The Glassworker, a hand-drawn animated film exploring themes of love, war and art. The film premiered at the Annecy International Animation Film Festival this year, and has been selected as Pakistan’s official submission for the 2025 Academy Awards in the Best International Feature Film category. At the Night of the Fellows cabaret event at TED2024, he credited the TED Fellows program with giving him the grit and support to finish this passion project.

Joshua Roman’s path took an unexpected turn when long COVID nearly ended his music career. But as he explained in a recent feature in The New York Times, his resilience brought him back, with a sold-out Well-Being Concert at Carnegie Hall last December and the launch of his new album, Immunity, this year — a blend of performance and storytelling that explores the impact of his illness. Joshua gave a once-in-a-lifetime cello performance and personal talk at the first Night of the Fellows at TED2024 and has been continuing his comeback tour throughout the year.

At TED2024, journalist Anjan Sundaram delivered a powerful talk on his environmental war reporting, highlighting the critical role of Indigenous communities — which despite representing only 5% of the global population, protect 80% of Earth's remaining biodiversity. The talk sparked conversations about the importance of journalism in surfacing this kind of untold story, and an attendee was so inspired, they funded Sundaram in starting the Stringer Foundation, an initiative supporting courageous social justice journalists worldwide. His vision: to make this the "Nobel Prize for journalism."