SINA founder Etienne Salborn has been included in Thinkers50’s Leaders50 for the second consecutive edition, recognising a form of leadership rooted in freesponsibility and distributed authority.
SINA is grateful that Etienne Salborn has been included in the Leaders50 again, following the 2024 edition and now the 2026 edition. The recognition is meaningful because of the selection process. Leaders50 honorees are nominated exclusively by people whose own work shapes how leadership is understood. To see SINA’s work recognised alongside leaders such as Satya Nadella of Microsoft, Jensen Huang of NVIDIA, and Jacqueline Novogratz of Acumen is an important moment for the wider SINA ecosystem.
For us, the recognition is not mainly about the person who started SINA. It is about a different understanding of leadership. In many aid and education systems, young people from difficult backgrounds are still treated as beneficiaries to be helped. Decisions are made for them. Money is controlled somewhere else. Their realities are discussed in rooms they are not part of. SINA exists to interrupt that pattern.
Across SINA Communities, young people take real roles and co-own and co-run SINA Communities. They do not learn about responsibility, they practice it. Even if this is sometimes uncomfortable. A SINA member may make a decision that others would not have made. It may create tension. It may turn out to be a mistake. In those moments, leadership is not about taking control back. It is about making the information visible enough for responsibility to grow.
Trust is not the absence of boundaries. Harm needs intervention. Money needs accountability. In SINA, young people are trusted with responsibility before they feel fully ready for it. This is how they grow. We call this principle freesponsibility. Freedom and responsibility are inseparable. When someone is given real freedom in a role, they also carry responsibility for what happens next. If every important decision still needs to come back to one founder, one manager, or one office, then the SINA Framework has not gone far enough. SINA is increasingly held by people and communities living it. We are doing things differently. That is the point.
Today, we are a growing ecosystem of 24 SINA Communities across 10 countries. We have created around 160 social enterprises and over 2,000 jobs. About 1,000 of us are currently shaping SINA every day by holding roles, making decisions, repairing what breaks, and creating solutions from problems we know closely.
This recognition through Thinkers50 points to that wider work. It belongs to all the scholars, facilitators, community members, coaches, founders of social enterprises, replication teams, and partners across SINA who keep making this kind of leadership real.
We are grateful to the nominators, to Thinkers50, and to everyone across the ecosystem who continues to show what leadership can become when responsibility is shared.
View the full list of Leaders50 honorees here:
https://thinkers50.com/leaders50/