Back in April 1968, Seattle magazine published a feature similar to our Most Influential issue, focusing on those who “truly call the shots.”

He started out small, leading Sioux Falls to three NAIA championships in his five years as head coach. He then worked his way up the NCAA food chain with stops at Southern Illinois and Western Michigan…

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Pai is an award-winning author, podcaster, and the city of Seattle’s 2023-24 Civic Poet. She has spent more than two decades in the literary field, penning 13 books…

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Jose Iñiguez discovered the art of opera through a PBS special. As a teenager, he came across a program featuring a tenor singing an aria while watching TV with his dad…

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I’m committed to educating and helping students transform their lives through Key to Change. My goal is to expand the program to reach more students…

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López-Alt is a two-time James Beard Award-winner, with all three of his books making it onto The New York Times bestseller list. His latest book, The Wok, currently in bookstores, won him his second James Beard Award this year.

Photo by J. Kenji López-Alt

On November 22, 1981, a teenage Christina Scheppelmann saw Don Carlo in Hamburg, Germany. The five-act opera, which Scheppelmann called an “incredibly monumental, relevant piece of music,” displayed the life and conflicts of a fictional 16th-century European prince. From then on, she was in love. “(Opera) is incredibly emotional. It’s exciting,” she says. “If you…

The solution-minded Warren founded Cougar Mountain Financial, a lender specializing in loans to women and minority-owned businesses at airports. So far, he has financed restaurants at a food court at Los Angeles International Airport, and several retailers at San Francisco International Airport…

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When Dr. Sheila Edwards Lange was appointed chancellor of the University of Washington Tacoma in the fall of 2021, she became the highest-ranking Black administrator in the UW system.

Photo by Ryan Moriarty/UW Tacoma

Though Megan Rapinoe and Sue Bird both retired last year, chances are you’ll hear from them more often than ever…

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“I had been back in Seattle for a while,” says Brothers, who grew up in Seattle and went to graduate school at New York University. “There were a lot of changes happening fast. The tech boom, people getting pushed out, gentrification. It was something I didn’t like witnessing.”

Photo by Tom Butcher

Volume in music is like seasoning food. Raise the volume too high and it warps the sound. Overseason the perfect bowl of crispy, warm, golden french fries with too much salt and you might as well be choking down a full salt shaker. The right balance of rhythm and harmony is akin to the balance of salt, fat, and acid in food.

Photo by Jesse Rivera