SPYSCAPE believes there’s a superhero in each of us and our True Superheroes series of stories and Gala Annual Awards celebrate people who’ve overcome adversity, make amazing contributions to society, and inspire others to do the same.
Each week we nominate people in different fields. These are five of our youngest rising stars with achievements that take our breath away!
True Superhero and Stranger Things star Millie Bobby Brown is Unicef’s youngest ambassador
Millie Bobby Brown is best-known as Stranger Things’ telekinetic Eleven - raised at the spine-chilling Hawkins National Laboratory - and as Sherlock’s younger sister, feminist in Enola Holmes. Born in Spain in 2004, Millie’s family moved to Britain and then to the US where Hollywood soon recognized her starlike qualities.
Off-camera, Millie has exposed a much more vulnerable side of her personality, however, working to solve a universal problem: bullying.
“It’s a terrifying feeling to look at your phone and see that messages people are sending you are filled with anger and hate - and even threats,” Millie said during her 2019 UN speech when she was just 15 years old. Millie set up a Twitter account @milliestopshate when she was 13 to spread positivity on a platform known for trolls. Within a day, Millie had 9,000 followers. By 2022, the account had more than 825,000 followers.
“I am convinced that social media doesn’t have to be a place of fear, bullying, and harassment. It can bring people together. It can be a place of love and support,” she said.
And if you’re not convinced that Gen Z can change the world, Millie’s got news for you: “Young people don't want to be talked about. We want to do the talking.”
SPYSCAPE believes there’s a superhero in each of us and our True Superheroes series of stories and Gala Annual Awards celebrate people who’ve overcome adversity, make amazing contributions to society, and inspire others to do the same.
Each week we nominate people in different fields. These are five of our youngest rising stars with achievements that take our breath away!
True Superhero and Stranger Things star Millie Bobby Brown is Unicef’s youngest ambassador
Millie Bobby Brown is best-known as Stranger Things’ telekinetic Eleven - raised at the spine-chilling Hawkins National Laboratory - and as Sherlock’s younger sister, feminist in Enola Holmes. Born in Spain in 2004, Millie’s family moved to Britain and then to the US where Hollywood soon recognized her starlike qualities.
Off-camera, Millie has exposed a much more vulnerable side of her personality, however, working to solve a universal problem: bullying.
“It’s a terrifying feeling to look at your phone and see that messages people are sending you are filled with anger and hate - and even threats,” Millie said during her 2019 UN speech when she was just 15 years old. Millie set up a Twitter account @milliestopshate when she was 13 to spread positivity on a platform known for trolls. Within a day, Millie had 9,000 followers. By 2022, the account had more than 825,000 followers.
“I am convinced that social media doesn’t have to be a place of fear, bullying, and harassment. It can bring people together. It can be a place of love and support,” she said.
And if you’re not convinced that Gen Z can change the world, Millie’s got news for you: “Young people don't want to be talked about. We want to do the talking.”
Anastasia Pagonis won Team USA’s first Gold medal of the Tokyo Paralympic Games, shattering the world record in the women’s 400m freestyle swim in the S4 category - a record she happened to have set earlier that day. As a result, Anastasia left Tokyo in 2021 with one Gold, two Bronze medals, and her newfound celebrity status as a sports superstar.
It is an incredible accomplishment for a True Superhero who - only three years before the Games - had fallen into a dark depression. Born in 2004, Anastasia was diagnosed with genetic and autoimmune retinopathy, which means her immune system attacked her retinas. By 14, her vision had almost completely deteriorated and Anastasia had to find a way to climb out of the darkness that enveloped her emotionally.
“Swimming is my outlet. Swimming is a place where I feel free. It’s my happy place. It’s the one place where - as much as I love my guide dog - I don’t need my guide dog. It’s just me and the pool,” she said.
Anastasia is now a social media sensation and a role model to teenagers, sighted or otherwise. With more than 2m TikTok followers, Anastasia explains what it means to be blind or visually impaired, hoping to break down barriers for disabled people.
Jerome Foster II speaks truth to power. Born in 2002, he is the White House’s youngest-ever advisor and he’s got a message for politicians who fail to tackle climate change: “We are going to vote them out. Either they stand up or they step down.”
Tough talk from a teenager barely out of high school but Jerome has the ear and the respect of Joe Biden. Foster sits on the US Environmental Justice Advisory Council and earned his place at the table. For 58 straight weeks, Jerome stood outside the White House every Friday during Donald Trump’s presidency and held a cardboard sign saying ‘School strike for climate’.
“Sometimes, just holding it makes me feel better,” Jerome told The Washington Post. “It’s an opportunity to shift that anxiety into a symbol of resistance, however small.”
In March 2021, Biden’s administration brought Jerome in from the cold and put him to work. They saw the potential in a teenager who’d already worked as a White House intern and founded an advocacy organization, OneMillionOfUs, to lobby young Americans to make their vote count. Young people made up one in every five votes in 2020, Jerome notes, and he’s watching politicians closely.
Malala Yousafzai is arguably the most well-known champion of education on the planet. She has beaten incredible odds to achieve feats that would put most fictional superheroes to shame, and her defiance in the face of extreme danger has inspired everyone from children to governments to join her campaigns.
Malala was born in 1997 in Mingora, a city in the Swat Valley of northern Pakistan. Her father was a teacher and a passionate advocate for education who ran a learning institution of his own in the city and instilled a love of learning in Malala from a very early age.
She was an enthusiastic student, and her father proudly spoke about how she would toddle into classes even before she could talk, acting as if she were the teacher. This was all to change in 2007 when the Taliban took control of the Swat Valley and adopted a scorched-earth policy toward education. Girls were banned from attending lessons and hundreds of schools were destroyed. With the typical resilience of the True Superhero, Malala refused to accept this.
The opening ceremonies for the Olympics and Paralympics are always an emotional, proud moment, but the Tokyo ceremony in August 2021 was a particularly poignant moment for Afghan Paralympian Mohammad Abbas Karimi.
The swimmer, a refugee who has lived in the US since 2016, wasn’t surrounded by other Afghan competitors as he marched into the stadium. Despite surviving grueling training schedules amid the pandemic lockdowns, Afghanistan’s premier athletes were forced to withdraw at the last moment because the Taliban takeover of their country meant athletes couldn’t secure safe flights to Japan.
Instead, Abbas Karimi, one of the six athletes representing the Refugee Paralympic Team, became ware of just how far he had come since he was born in Kabul in 1997, without arms, and began his difficult journey through refugee camps and into the safety of the US. He had long dreamed of one day competing on the international stage as a swimmer and - despite all odds - Abbas had arrived.
“The obstacles I overcame to achieve this are, for many people, unimaginable,” he wrote. “I felt the power and the importance of representation. It was time for the world to see what people with disabilities - including refugees - can achieve when they have the right opportunities.”
And that is exactly what the world saw. How did this young swimmer, who specializes in the notoriously grueling butterfly stroke, make his way from Kabul, via Turkey and the US, to Tokyo and sporting greatness?
This story is part of our weekly briefing. Sign up to receive the FREE briefing to your inbox.
Gadgets & Gifts
Put your spy skills to work with these fabulous choices from secret notepads & invisible inks to Hacker hoodies & high-tech handbags. We also have an exceptional range of rare spy books, including many signed first editions.
We all have valuable spy skills - your mission is to discover yours. See if you have what it takes to be a secret agent, with our authentic spy skills evaluation* developed by a former Head of Training at British Intelligence. It's FREE so share & compare with friends now!
