The winners of Fast Company’s 2021 World Changing Ideas Awards have just been announced, honouring the businesses, policies, projects, and concepts that are actively engaged and deeply committed to pursuing innovation when it comes to solving health and climate crises, social injustice, or economic inequality.
Losing Lena has been named a finalist in the highly competitive advertising category. Losing Lena is a compelling film and campaign developed for Code Like a Girl by Clemenger BBDO Sydney, FINCH, Facebook and Kamber, that asks us to help remove one image to make millions of women feel welcome in tech.
Now in its fifth year, the World Changing Ideas Awards showcase 33 winners, more than 400 finalists, and more than 800 honourable mentions—with Health and Wellness, AI & Data among the most popular categories. A panel of eminent Fast Company editors and reporters selected winners and finalists from a pool of more than 4,000 entries across transportation, education, food, politics, technology, and more. Plus, several new categories were added, including Pandemic Response, Urban Design, and Architecture. The 2021 awards feature entries from across the globe, from Brazil to Denmark to Vietnam.
Showcasing some of the world’s most inventive entrepreneurs and companies tackling exigent global challenges, Fast Company’s Summer 2021 issue (on newsstands May 10) highlights, among others, a lifesaving bassinet; the world’s largest carbon sink, thanks to carbon-eating concrete; 3D-printed schools; an at-home COVID-19 testing kit; a mobile voting app; and the world’s cleanest milk.
“We are thrilled to be recognised on the world stage by Fast Company for this most important piece of work. If we want a better, more diverse world, many more talented women are needed in technology. We hope the story of Lena continues to be a catalyst for positive change, and are honoured to be included among this year’s World Changing Ideas,” said Brendan Willenberg and Darren Wright, executive creative directors Clemenger BBDO Sydney.
“There is no question our society and planet are facing deeply troubling times. So, it’s important to recognise organisations that are using their ingenuity, impact, design, scalability, and passion to solve these problems,” says Stephanie Mehta, editor-in-chief of Fast Company. “Our journalists, under the leadership of senior editor Morgan Clendaniel, have discovered some of the most groundbreaking projects that have launched since the start of 2020.