While the world has come to know Ivanka Trump as the nation’s First Daughter—as well as an entrepreneur and a devoted wife and mother—I have had the privilege of calling her my dear friend for 12 years. We met as neighbors in New York City and quickly grew close. As modern working moms, we have faced many of the same challenges and joys, and she has become a trusted counsel in my life.
Ivanka continues to earn my respect and admiration for how she has chosen to use her new visibility. She has long advocated to empower women and girls and is now leading education initiatives and working to put an end to human trafficking. I am deeply impressed by her courage to leave behind life as she knew it and move her young family to Washington to pursue positive change.
My daughters have long looked up to her. Now women and girls around the globe can look up to her too.
Jared Kushner
By Henry Kissinger
Transitioning the presidency between parties is one of the most complex undertakings in American politics. The change triggers an upheaval in the intangible mechanisms by which Washington runs: an incoming President is likely to be less familiar with formal structures, and the greater that gap, the heavier the responsibility of those advisers who are asked to fill it.
This space has been traversed for nearly four months by Jared Kushner, whom I first met about 18 months ago, when he introduced himself after a foreign policy lecture I had given. We have sporadically exchanged views since. As part of the Trump family, Jared is familiar with the intangibles of the President. As a graduate of Harvard and NYU, he has a broad education; as a businessman, a knowledge of administration. All this should help him make a success of his daunting role flying close to the sun.
Xi Jinping
By John Kerry
Fascinating, smart, forever the iconoclast breaking the mold, Xi Jinping has a confident determination to assert a new role for China on the world stage.
The evidence is everywhere of late: from joining with the U.S. to gavel in a historic climate-change commitment many once dismissed as a pipe dream, to a coming-out speech in Davos that announced an aspiration to lead in the global order—something his predecessors dismissed as a burden belonging to other nations, always protecting instead China's prerogative to develop at its own pace.
Embracing a new role among nations will no doubt bring with it more challenging choices and realities. Those expectations can collide with a path China still guards—on human rights, on international law in the South China Sea or in the constructive role a motivated China could always play in resolving the provocations of a petulant Kim Jong Un next door.
But there's no mistaking the potential that one day we might look back and say that Xi's time at the helm marked the inflection point for his country and his people.
Fan Bingbing
By Diane von Furstenberg (她好像是很有名的一位服装设计师)
The first thing I noticed when I met Fan Bingbing was her inner strength, which was exuded so effortlessly it was difficult to take my eyes off her. I am not the only one. A giant star in mainland China, Fan Bingbing has also made her mark in Hollywood as Blink in X-Men: Days of Future Past. And her innate sense of style has made her a natural to represent global brands.
She is also a woman who knows her own strength. Not only is Fan Bingbing a brilliant actor, but she is also a formidable businesswoman. She's one of the world's highest-paid female actors, she has created her own studio to make her own films and develop other projects, and still she finds time for philanthropy, co-founding Heart Ali to help children who suffer from congenital heart disease. Her fierce independence has earned her the nickname Fan Ye, or Master Fan. She is the woman she wants to be. Her wish, as they say, is our command.
Donald Trump
By Paul Ryan
He always finds a way to get it done. When so many, including me at times, didn't see how he could pull it off, Donald Trump won a historic victory. And in becoming the 45th President of the United States, he completely rewrote the rules of politics and reset the course of this country. A businessman always willing to challenge convention, he has shaken up Washington and laid out an agenda of generational proportions. Never afraid of a battle, he has made it his mission to fight for those who feel forgotten. Where others would pivot, he stays true to who he is. Where others would turn back, he forges ahead. Up close, I have found a driven, hands-on leader, with the potential to become a truly transformational American figure. I have little doubt that he will, once again, find a way to defy the odds and get it done.
Jean Liu
By Tim Cook (Cook is the CEO of Apple, which has a seat on Didi’s board)
Jean Liu is a disrupter, and not only through her ambitious effort to change the way people in China commute, travel and connect with one another. With Didi Chuxing, the ride-sharing, taxi-hailing startup she leads alongside Cheng Wei—its name means “Beep Beep Mobility” in Chinese—Jean has built a transportation platform that offers convenience and flexibility to tens of millions of commuters.
She and her team are succeeding with innovative, big-data algorithms that aim both to improve the efficiency of Didi’s service and to ease the congestion on roadways. By analyzing commuter patterns the way oceanographers track the tides, Didi may help traffic jams go the way of the flip phone.
In over 400 cities across China, Jean has also built a company that is dedicated to serving the community around it. Guiding Didi to this higher purpose, and giving back to the places where it does business, she shares my belief that companies can and should measure themselves by more than just the bottom line.
