These days, sustainability and responsibility are no small matter. However, ethical action - whether performed by large corporations or small, local non-profits - is not something that just happens; it’s brought on by inspired individuals. In honor of the approaching New Year, we decided to bring together the forerunners of the business ethics world from the past year, wrapped together in a tidy 1 to 100 ranking.

In order to come up with a list of nominees for the list, we reached out to a group of experts from major universities and institutions in order to assemble an advisory panel. With their collective expertise, and the help of a working group of Ethisphere editors, reporters and fact checkers (and after much heated and lengthy debate), we assembled the names of hundreds of nominees, and chiseled it down to a finely honed list of 100. The experts that weighed in on this story all belong somewhere near the top of the list in their own right but, unfortunately, they can’t be. Those were the rules.

[1] // Read more.