At a dinner event celebrating the 2026 TIME Trailblazers at the ARIA Resort & Casino in Las Vegas on Sept. 14, some of the honorees offered toasts to their collective achievements in shaping a brighter future and reflecting on what continues to inspire them. Professional climber Alex Honnold said that while he was proud of his athletic feats in his nearly two-decade career, he believes those will all someday be surpassed. But his work at The Honnold Foundation, a nonprofit supporting solar energy use in communities, “has a real impact on human lives, and that can’t really be taken away.” Traveling around the world and seeing communities in need of reliable power sources has helped Honnold see access to energy as a basic human need as important as shelter and food.
While the organization has over $11 million committed to 75 solar projects just this year, Honnold says that it is “literally a tiny, tiny drop in the bucket in terms of the global transition of renewables.” But he said what gives him hope is the power of “dreaming small,” and he continues to draw inspiration from communities that need better access to energy. Marine biologist and National Geographic Explorer Erika Woolsey, another honoree, said she draws her hope from the reef-building coral. To her, the anemone look-alikes lift much of the weight in rebuilding seabeds and coastlines wrecked by massive storms and bleaching events.
Woolsey said that years ago, as she co-founded The Hydrous, a nonprofit devoted to helping people appreciate the marine environment by creating 3D models of them, one of her previous study sites at the Great Barrier Reef was wiped out by a cyclone. In her recent return, Woolsey witnessed the marine site grow anew, populated with corals and fish. Soni said his nonprofit Resilience Force, which works with third-party contractors to ensure recovery workers get better pay and safety standards, has made a new, “highly skilled, dignified profession” out of the job.
He also touted how the years-long reconstruction and adaptation jobs these workers do are irreplaceable, not even by automation or artificial intelligence. You are building hope—out of 3D-printed homes in Texas, innovative reconstruction after the Los Angeles fires, greenhouses in India … To truly rebuild, it will take all of us in this room and outside of it.” The TIME Trailblazers Dinner: Designing and Making the Future was presented by Autodesk.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
