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How we made the Recode 100

A list of the year’s real winners.

Recode 100

It’s here: Our first annual list of the people in tech and business who actually made the biggest impact this year.

Our goal was to find the people who kicked the most ass in 2017 — the leaders, movement-starters, engineers, negotiators and creatives who have been the most productive and innovative in the industries we cover — primarily in tech, media and commerce, but also some of our new focus areas like transportation, policy and robotics.

And we think we did!

I encourage you to read through our 100 profiles, from No. 1, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, who is setting Amazon up to dominate for another decade, through No. 100, the Duffer brothers, whose “Stranger Things” has been a spooky hit for Netflix.

Don’t miss No. 2, Susan Fowler, who brought down Uber’s rotten culture (and executive team) with only her words, or No. 20, Colin Kaepernick, who has exposed injustice and hypocrisy in the sports business and culture. Or Kara Swisher’s list of the “Terrible 10” who might have made our list if they weren’t so awful.

The Recode 100 has been a big collaboration. Our methodology included input from our community, who submitted many of the winners; our Advisory Team, who nominated, vetted and helped rank their peers; and Recode’s expert editorial team.

Thanks to our inaugural Advisory Team for their time and expertise:

  • Peter Barrett, founder and CTO at Playground
  • Troy Carter, founder and CEO at Atom Factory
  • Eva Chen, head of fashion partnerships at Instagram
  • Lili Cheung, corporate vice president of AI and research at Microsoft
  • Aneesh Chopra, president at CareJourney
  • Regina Dugan, VP of engineering and head of Building 8 at Facebook
  • Andy Dunn, CEO of Bonobos and SVP of digital consumer brands at Walmart U.S. eCommerce
  • Joi Ito, director at MIT Media Lab
  • Rebecca Kaden, general partner at Union Square Ventures
  • Ann Miura-Ko, partner at Floodgate
  • Dawn Ostroff, president at Conde Nast Entertainment
  • Nilay Patel, editor in chief at The Verge
  • Megan Quinn, general partner at Spark Capital
  • Carol Reiley, co-founder and president at Drive.ai
  • Anand Sanwal, co-founder and CEO of CB Insights
  • Reshma Saujani, founder and CEO of Girls Who Code
  • Ted Ullyot, partner at Andreessen Horowitz
  • Ken Washington, chief technology officer at Ford Motor Company.

And Recode’s editorial team: Shirin Ghaffary, who managed this project; Meghann Farnsworth, our engagement editor, who led production; Edmund Lee, our managing editor; and our writers and editors who contributed profiles, including Johana Bhuiyan, Kat Borgerding, Joe Brown, Elizabeth Crane, Jason Del Rey, Eric Johnson, Peter Kafka, Rani Molla, Tony Romm, Theodore Schleifer, Kara Swisher and Kurt Wagner.

And Vox Media’s experiential and marketing teams, who have put together a fabulous celebration for the winners: Michelle Berg, Devin Briski, Zach Kahn, Kim Last, Jill Pendergast, Laura Scaglione and Shannon Thompson.

And our Vox Media colleagues and contributors who led the technical and design parts of this production: Krystal Stevens, who led visual design; plus Deep Adke, Ben Alt, Gregg Bernstein, Mandy Brown, Ambika Castle, Billy Ceskavich, Dan Chilton, Marie Connelly, Georgia Cowley, Jon Douglas, Nate Edwards, Priya Ganapati, Katie Kovalcin, Courtney Leonard, Meg Lewis, Steven Leon, Tim Lingard, Erik Luchauer, Greg MacWilliam, Pete Mall, Katie O'Dowd, Aaron Parkening, Christopher Reath, Nozlee Samadzadeh, Kelsey Scherer, Nancy Seay, Sanette Tanaka, Sarah Taylor, Blake Thomson, Ashley Tsang, Victor Ware, Jesse Young, David Zhou and Nicole Zhu.

And, most of all, you, our readers and community, for your input, attention and support. Thank you!

This article originally appeared on Recode.net.