These Philly Change-Makers Made the Forbes 30 Under 30 List

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Forbes released its 30 Under 30 class for 2017 on Tuesday, and twelve young Philadelphians made the list, which recognizes the country’s most impactful young innovators and change-makers.

This year, Forbes said, the competition was “more extreme than ever,” with more than 15,000 nomination for only 600 spots across 20 categories of 30 honorees each. The categories range from education and healthcare to media and social entrepreneurship.

In addition to giving us the lowdown on who these young people are, Forbes surveyed the bunch on some other interesting tidbits. The results of the survey put a spotlight on Penn, one of the five most-attended universities for the honorees. The survey also found that the group’s number-one dream mentor by far is SpaceX CEO and University of Pennsylvania graduate Elon Musk.

Here are the young Philly movers and shakers who made the list:

1. Olivier Noel, DNASimple CEO (Science)
2. Muhga Eltigani, The NaturAll Club CEO & co-founder (Retail and E-Commerce)
3. Sam Roberts, The NaturAll Club COO & co-founder (Retail and E-Commerce)
4. Akshay Khanna, vice president of strategy for the Sixers (Sports)
5. Jon Hartley, Real Time Macroeconomics founder and regular Forbes and Huffington Post contributor (Law & Policy)
6. Yakir Gola and Rafael Ilishayev, goPuff founders (Retail and E-Commerce)
7. TowerView Health founders Ankur Aggarwal, Hareesh Ganesan, Nick Valilis and Rahul Jain (Healthcare)
8. Michael Xufu Huang, M WOODS museum co-founder (Art & Style)

Forbes has a strict no-repeats rule for the list. Past honoree and Scholly founder Christopher Gray sits on 2017’s 30 Under 30 All Star Alumni list. Last year, nine Philadelphians, including BioBots founders Danny Cabrera and Ricky Solorzano and Little League baseball player Mo’Ne Davis, were included.

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