Who Is The Most Powerful Person In The World 2021? [With Pictures]
Are you looking for the list of the most powerful person in the world? If yes, then this informative article is for you. You will be given detailed information about the list of the most powerful person in the world as of 2021.
Political leaders exercise the most power. As a result, there will be a handful of those from developed countries claiming a spot. However, there are also other influential leaders outside of politics such as religious leaders, innovators, and other celebrities. These are people who are looked up to as opinion shapers and influencers.
Who Is The Most Powerful Person In The World?
To determine the powerful people, one has to consider influential players in business, politics, and entertainment. Here are the top 15 most powerful leaders in the world:
1. Xi JinpingXi
Jinping has been the president of China since 2013, making him the most powerful man in the world. Before that, he served as the General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party and the chairman of the Central Military Commission.
He is the son of a Chinese Communist veteran, Xi Zhongxun. He studied Chemical Engineering at Tsinghua University. In 2018, he abolished the presidential term limits in China and ensured a firm grip on the ruling party by introducing strong measures of enforcing party discipline.
He has expanded China’s influence in Africa and Europe through an aggressive foreign policy. The western world views him as a dictator based on an increase of censorship and mass surveillance, deterioration of human rights and the elimination of term limits.
2. Vladimir Putin
Russia’s President Vladimir Putin is the second influential person in the world. He has served as the president of his country since 2012. Before that, he served in the same capacity from 1999 to 2008. In the years he was not the president (2008 to 2012), he served as the country’s prime minister.
Putin graduated in 1975 with a law degree from Leningrad State University. He worked as a KGB foreign intelligence officer for 16 years and rose through the ranks to become Lieutenant Colonel. In 2021, he changed the law to allow him to run for reelection.
3. Joe Biden
Joe Biden is one of the most powerful politicians in the world. He is the 46th president of the United States of America, having beaten Donald Trump in the 2020 presidential elections. He represented Delaware as a senator from 1973 to 2009 when he became the USA’s 47th vice president under Barack Obama.
Biden has a law degree from Syracuse University, which he earned in 1968. He is the oldest elected president of the United States and the first to have a female and an African/Asian-American vice president. His initial work as president has been to reverse most of Trump’s foreign policies, especially those relating to immigration and climate change.
4. Angela Merkel
Angela Merkel has served as the chancellor of Germany since 2005, making her the most powerful woman in the world. Before she became chancellor, Merkel was the opposition leader from 2002 to 2005 and leader of the Christian Democratic Union from 2000 to 2018. She is the first female chancellor of Germany and is viewed as the de facto leader of the European Union.
She has a doctorate in quantum chemistry which she obtained in 1986. She worked as a research scientist for three years until 1989, when she ventured into politics. After the 1989 revolutions in Germany, Merkel briefly served as the deputy spokesperson for the first democratically elected East German Government.
5. Jeff Bezos
Jeff Bezos is the first entrepreneur on the list of the most influential people in the world in 2021. The internet entrepreneur was born in 1964 and became a tycoon thanks to his multinational technology company Amazon. Currently, he is the richest person in the world, making him a powerful person.
Mr Bezos has a degree in electrical engineering and computer science from Princeton University. He worked in Wall Street for about eight years and then founded Amazon in 1994. Initially, the company was an online bookstore.
The company now offers a wide variety of e-commerce products and services such as cloud computing, video/audio streaming and artificial intelligence. Amazon is the largest online sales company in the world. Bezos is also the aerospace manufacturer and sub-orbital spaceflight services company Blue Origin.
6. Pope Francis
Pope Francis is the head of the Catholic Church and the sovereign of the Vatican City State. The Catholic Church has followers from all over the world who recognize him as their leader. As a result, he is among the most popular world leaders.
He is the first pope to be a member of the Society of Jesus. Francis is also the first pope from the Americas and the first from the Southern Hemisphere. In his younger years, he worked as a bouncer and a janitor. He then trained to be a chemist and became a technician for a food science laboratory.
He contracted a severe illness, and when he recovered, he decided to join the Society of Jesus and became a priest 11 years later. After becoming pope, he maintained the traditional views of the Catholic Church about clerical celibacy, ordination of women and abortion.
7. Bill Gates
The American business magnate Bill Gates has an interest in many areas. He is an author, software developer, landowner and philanthropist. He is most known as the co-founder of Microsoft Corporation. He held several positions in the company, including being the chairman, chief executive officer, president and chief software architect.
Gates is undoubtedly the most famous entrepreneur of the microcomputer revolution of the 1970s and 1980s. He is often the subject of criticism for business tactics that are viewed as anti-competitive. Currently, he is more involved in charitable courses.
Together with his wife, they are the founders of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Today, he is involved in climate change, education, development and global health. He has featured yearly in the Forbes list of the world’s wealthiest people.
8. Mohammed bin Salman Al Saud
The crown prince of Saudi Arabia also happens to be the country’s deputy prime minister. He also serves as the chairman of the Council for Economic and Development Affairs, the chairman of the Council of Political and Security Affairs and Minister of Defense.
He is often described as the power behind the throne of his father, King Salman. All these titles earn him a spot among the powerful figures in Asia. Saud has been at the centre of several key reforms such as introducing regulations to restrict religious police powers, eliminating the ban on female drivers and weakening the male-guardianship system.
However, his tenure has also been rocked with controversies such as the increase in the alleged cases of torture of human rights activists, escalation of the Qatar diplomatic crisis, the phone hack against Jeff Bezos and the assassination of Jamal Khashoggi.
9. Narendra Modi
Narendra Modi is the prime minister of India, the second-most populous country behind China. This makes him the most popular prime minister in the world. From 2001 until 2014, he was the chief minister of Gujarat and a member of the parliament for Varanasi.
He is a member of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and its National Democratic Alliance. He is also a registered member of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS). It is a Hindu nationalist volunteer organization.
Modi was raised in Vadnagar which is a small town in Northeastern Gujarat. After finishing high school, he travelled around India for two years visiting several religious centres. He started working for the RSS in 1971. In 1975, he went into hiding during the nationwide state of emergency.
The RSS assigned him to the BJP in 1985, where he grew through the ranks to become the general secretary. He led the party in the 2014 general election into a majority in the lower house of the Indian parliament.
10. Larry Page
Larry Page is an internet entrepreneur and computer scientist known for being one of the co-founders of Google along with Sergey Brin. He was the CEO of Google for four years, from 1997 to 2001 when he stepped down. He again acted as Google’s CEO before leaving to become the CEO of Alphabet Inc from 2011 to 2015.
He stepped down from being the CEO, opting to be a board member and controlling shareholder. Page is the sixth wealthiest person globally, and this is thanks to his work in Google. He has also co-created PageRank, which is Google’s search ranking algorithm.
Page has a Bachelor of Science Degree in Computer Engineering from the University of Michigan and a Master of Science from Stanford University. He also has a PhD in Computer Science from the same university.
11. Jerome H. Powell
Jerome Powell is the 16th chair of the Federal Reserve, a position he has held since February 2018 when he was nominated by President Donald Trump. She was first appointed to its board by President Barack Obama in 2012. During his tenure as chair, he developed a reputation of being a consensus builder and problem solver regarding monetary matters.
Powell has played a crucial role in the financial efforts aimed at combating Covid-19. He has a degree in politics from Princeton University and a Juris Doctor from Georgetown University Law Center. He has worked for several financial institutions, the culmination of which saw him become a partner of The Carlyle Group.
12. Emmanuel Macron
Emmanuel Macron is the president of France and the ex officio co-prince of Andorra. He has been in power since May 2017. He obtained a Degree in Philosophy from Paris Nanterre University and a Master’s Degree in public affairs at Sciences Po. He began his career as a senior civil servant at the Inspectorate General of Finances before becoming an investment banker at Rothschild & Co.
His meteoric rise in politics started in 2012 when President Francois Hollande appointed him as deputy secretary-general. Shortly after, he was appointed to the cabinet as Minister of the Economy, Industry and Digital Affairs. He resigned two years later and formed his party, which he vied for the presidency in 2017.
13. Mark Zuckerberg
Zuckerberg is the co-founder of the famous social media platform Facebook for which he is the chairman, CEO and controlling shareholder. He is a media magnate, an internet entrepreneur and a philanthropist. In addition to that, he co-founded the solar sail spacecraft development Breakthrough Starshot, where he is a board member.
He launched Facebook while still a student at Harvard University in 2004. Having reached more than 1 billion users in 2012, Zuckerberg took the company public. In 2007 he became the world’s youngest self-made billionaire at 23. He is currently the 5th-richest person in the world.
14. Boris Johnson
Boris is the current prime minister of the United Kingdom and the leader of the conservative party. He served as the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs from 2016 to 2018. Before that, he was the mayor of London from 2008 to 2016.
His distinguished career includes being a member of parliament for Uxbridge and South Ruislip since 2015 and before that an MP for Henley from 2001 to 2008. Johnson is a strong advocate of one-nation and national conservatism.
He went to school at Eton College and then Balliol College in Oxford, where he studied classics. In 1986, he was elected president of the Oxford Union. He had worked as a writer when he was a correspondent and later a political columnist for The Daily Telegraph.
15. Li Keqiang
The Chinese politician Li Keqiang currently serves as the premier of the State Council of the People’s Republic of China since 2013. He started in the Communist Youth League in 1998 then rose through the ranks. He became the governor of Henan in 2004. In the year 2013, he became the first ranked vice-premier.
There is a clear relationship between wealth, politics, and power when looking at some of the most influential people in the world. Who is the most powerful person in the world? The most powerful figures are political people of the richest nations on earth and entrepreneurs.
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