Fareed Rafiq Zakaria ( /fəˈriːd zəˈkɑriə/; Konkani/Hindi: फ़रीद राफ़िक़ ज़कारिया, Urdu: فرید رفیق زکریا; born January 20, 1964) is an Indian-American journalist and author. From 2000 to 2010, he was a columnist for Newsweek and editor of Newsweek International. In 2010 he became editor-at-large of Time magazine. He is also the host of CNN's Fareed Zakaria GPS, and a frequent commentator and author about issues related to international relations, trade and American foreign policy.

In 2010, the government of India honored him with the Padma Bhushan for his contribution towards journalism.

Zakaria was born in Mumbai (then Bombay), Maharashtra, India, to a Konkani Muslim family. His father, Rafiq Zakaria, was a politician associated with the Indian National Congress and an Islamic scholar. His mother, Fatima Zakaria, was for a time the editor of the Sunday Times of India.

Zakaria attended the Cathedral and John Connon School in Mumbai. He received a Bachelor of Arts from Yale University, where he was president of the Yale Political Union, editor-in-chief of the Yale Political Monthly, a member of the Scroll and Key society, and a member of the Party of the Right. He later earned a Doctor of Philosophy in political science from Harvard University in 1993, where he studied under Samuel P. Huntington and Stanley Hoffmann, as well as international relations theorist Robert Keohane.

Elon Musk (born June 28, 1971) is a South African-born American business magnate, engineer and inventor. He is best known for co-founding SpaceX, Tesla Motors and X.com, which later became Paypal after acquiring the service. He is currently the CEO and Chief Designer of SpaceX, CEO and Product Architect of Tesla Motors and Chairman of SolarCity. While at those companies, Musk co-designed the first viable electric car of the modern era, the Tesla Roadster, a private successor to the Space Shuttle, Falcon 9/Dragon, and the world's largest Internet payment system, PayPal.

Elon Musk was born in Pretoria, South Africa, the son of a Canadian-American mother and a South African father. His maternal grandfather was from Minnesota, and had moved to Saskatchewan, where Musk's mother was born. His father is an engineer and his mother is an author, nutritionist and model, appearing on the cover of New York Magazine in 2011 and a Time Magazine supplement in 2010.

Musk bought his first computer at age 10 and taught himself how to program; by the age of 12 he sold his first commercial software for about $500, a space game called Blastar.

Mukesh Dhirubhai Ambani (Gujarati: મુકેશ ધીરુભાઈ અંબાની) (born on 19 April 1957) is an Indian business magnate who is the chairman and managing director of the Indian conglomerate Reliance Industries Limited (RIL), the foremost company of the Indian energy and materials conglomerate Reliance Group. The company was ranked #134th in Fortune Global 500 and is India's most valuable company by market value and second-largest Indian company by turnover. Ambani remains the largest individual shareholder, with 44.7 percent stake in RIL. The company is the operator of the world’s biggest oil refining complex and owner of India’s biggest natural gas field. Mukesh's younger brother is Anil Ambani, who heads Reliance Group. The Ambani family is the richest family in India and one of the richest in the world, their wealth inherited from Dhirubhai Ambani, founder of 2nd largest Indian conglomerate Reliance Group (after Tata Group).

In 2010, he was named among the most powerful people in the world by Forbes in its list of "68 people who matter most" As of 2012, he is the second richest man in Asia and the 19th richest person in the world with a personal wealth of US$22.3 billion. In 2007, a strong rally in the Indian stock market and the appreciation of the Indian rupee boosted the market capitalisation of Reliance group companies, briefly making him the world’s richest man.

Neil deGrasse Tyson ( /ˈniːəl dəˈɡræs ˈtaɪsən/ born October 5, 1958) is an American astrophysicist and science communicator. He is currently the Frederick P. Rose Director of the Hayden Planetarium at the Rose Center for Earth and Space, and a research associate in the department of astrophysics at the American Museum of Natural History. Since 2006 he has hosted the educational science television show NOVA scienceNOW on PBS, and has been a frequent guest on The Daily Show, The Colbert Report, Real Time with Bill Maher, and Jeopardy!. It was announced on August 5, 2011, that Tyson will be hosting a new sequel to Carl Sagan's Cosmos: A Personal Voyage television series.

Tyson was born as the second of three children in the borough of Manhattan in New York City, but was raised in the Bronx. His mother, Sunchita Feliciano Tyson, was a gerontologist and his father, Cyril deGrasse Tyson, was a sociologist, human resource commissioner for the New York City mayor, John Lindsay, and was the first Director of HARYOU. Tyson attended the Bronx High School of Science (1972–1976, astrophysics emphasis) where he was captain of the wrestling team and was editor-in-chief of the school's Physical Science Journal. Tyson had an abiding interest in astronomy from the age of eleven, following his visit to the Hayden Planetarium at age nine. Tyson recalls that "so strong was that imprint [of the night sky] that I'm certain that I had no choice in the matter, that in fact, the universe called me." He obsessively studied astronomy in his teens, and eventually even gained some fame in the astronomy community by giving lectures on the subject at the age of fifteen.

Ayaan Hirsi Magan Ali ( pronunciation (help·info); Somali: Ayaan Xirsi Cali; Arabic: أيان حرسي علي‎ / ALA-LC: Ayān Ḥirsī ‘Alī; 13 November 1969) is a Somali-Dutch feminist and atheist activist, writer and politician who is known for her views critical of Islam, practices of circumcision and female genital cutting. Her screenplay for Theo van Gogh's movie Submission led to death threats, resulting in the director's murder. The daughter of the Somali politician and opposition leader Hirsi Magan Isse, she is a founder of the women's rights organisation the AHA Foundation.

When she was eight, Hirsi Ali's family left Somalia for Saudi Arabia, then Ethiopia, and eventually settled in Kenya. She sought and obtained political asylum in the Netherlands in 1992, under circumstances that later became the centre of a political controversy. In 2003 she was elected a member of the House of Representatives (the lower house of the Dutch parliament), representing the People's Party for Freedom and Democracy (VVD). A political crisis surrounding the potential stripping of her Dutch citizenship led to her resignation from the parliament, and led indirectly to the fall of the second Balkenende cabinet in 2006.