Chaun Webster, 31

Co-owner and co-founder of Ancestry Books, a north Minneapolis pop-up bookstore that focuses on "re-centering the narratives of indigenous authors and authors of color."

What is a leader?

I struggle at times with how I want to think about that role or its relationship to people. I tend to not want to think of that in a hierarchical way. … And so I don't know that I accept the traditional binary of leader and follower. I don't know. I think that at the end of the day, the sort of impact that I want to make is one where I really see the value in everyday people being able to assess the world around them in meaningful ways and imagine a new world.

How would you define success in your work?

I think in many ways [success is] creating the kind of space that creates other spaces. … To me, I think success is to be able to believe in the [future] Nikki Giovannis who are in north Minneapolis right now who are not being seen as such. … I think to me it is about not foreclosing possibilities that Nikki Giovanni or Toni Morrison or Octavia Butler or June Jordan could be coming up from north Minneapolis.