The Bloomberg 50

THE PEOPLE WHO DEFINED AN UNPRECEDENTED YEAR

There was a joke on Twitter this fall: Decades from now, Ph.D. candidates in history will specialize in a particular day from 2020. Which is to say this year was, uh, big. Covid, a reckoning on race, and a U.S. election made compiling the fourth annual Bloomberg 50 easier in ways (many people are doing notable things) and harder in others (many people are doing notable things).

Here are a few rising above 2020’s high bar in our look at the people in business, entertainment, finance, politics, and science and technology whose accomplishments merit recognition: Aurora James (page 44) got retailers to pledge 15% of their shelf space to Black-owned brands in the wake of George Floyd’s death, and Tim Bray (page 63) quit his executive job at Amazon.com to protest the firing of workers who’d raised concerns about Covid. The president of Taiwan (page 74) kept the pandemic under control, and when Australian wildfires raged, comedian Celeste Barber (page 50) raised millions in relief.

Check out page 75 for alums of our list whose 2020 efforts also deserved a nod. To see who might appear on next year’s Bloomberg 50, turn to page 76—though we’d be lying if we said we could predict the next few days, let alone 2021.

SUMIT SINGH

CEO, CHEWY INC.

DANIA BEACH, FLA. As the retailer came to dominate the online pet supply business, its stock price more than doubled, driving up its market value by almost $15 billion, to $26 billion.