How To Be Considered For One Of Our Lists
What we need, what helps, and what makes no difference at all.
We are asked regularly how someone comes to our attention. The process is not secret and the answer is more mundane than people expect.
Nominations are open
Anyone may nominate anyone, including themselves. Self-nomination carries no penalty — it is simply information, and we assess it the same way.
A nomination is not an application and creates no entitlement. It puts a name into a pool we research.
What is actually useful
The most useful nomination is specific: what the person did, when, what their particular responsibility was, and what resulted.
Verifiable references help — filings, official records, coverage in publications that check facts, institutional pages, published work. We need to be able to establish claims independently.
What is not useful
Adjectives. A nomination describing someone as visionary and passionate, without saying what they did, tells us nothing we can check.
Vanity metrics, follower counts and awards from organizations that charge for them likewise carry no weight.
What makes no difference
Advertising with us. Buying a paid feature. Knowing someone here. Publicist contact volume.
These are not gestures toward independence — the commercial and editorial sides of this publication are separated, nobody selling advertising has any role in list selection, and no place on any list is for sale. Repeated approaches from a representative do not improve a candidate's position.
What happens next
We research nominations against public sources, contact candidates or their organizations to verify facts, and offer a right of reply before publication.
Most nominations do not result in inclusion, and that is not a judgement about the person's worth — the constraint is the number of places and what we were able to verify in the time available.
Corrections
If we publish something inaccurate about you, tell us and we will correct it on the page and date the correction.