Becoming a Changemaker: Transform Your Career, Your Community, and the World

If the word "leader" didn't exist, what word would we use instead? For Alex Budak, the answer is "changemaker." An award-winning lecturer at the University of California, Berkeley, with a triple appointment across the Haas School of Business, the School of Public Health and the College of Natural Resources, Budak advises global organizations including Accenture, The World Bank and Lyft. "The word 'leader' can be so charged that people who really are leaders may not fully embrace it," he explains. "Being a changemaker is something that doesn't require a title and gives individuals a sense of purpose and agency."

That idea anchors his book Becoming a Changemaker, named a top 5 nonfiction book about work by CNBC and translated into 27 languages, and his TEDx Talk, "You Don't Have to Be a CEO to Be a Leader." It also grew from practice: Budak co-founded StartSomeGood, which has raised more than $12 million to launch and scale change efforts in more than 50 countries. He is a member of the Thinkers50 Radar Class of 2026 and one of Poets & Quants' top 50 undergraduate business professors.