The ninth annual Tribeca Disruptive Innovation Awards took place on April 24th, honoring a diverse selection of disruptors, revolutionaries and game-changers. Hosted by journalist Tamron Hall, the event’s honorees included Questlove, #MeToo founder Tarana Burke, Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Beatrice Fihn and atom bomb survivor Koko Kondo.
Naomi Wadler, the 11-year-old #NeverAgain activist who was the youngest speaker at last month’s March For Our Lives in Washington, D.C., captured the audience’s attention—and garnered the event’s first standing ovation—with her acceptance speech.
“Black women are forgotten, and their names aren’t remembered,” Wadler said. “They aren’t thought of as humans; they’re thought of as numbers and statistics.” She then addressed the recent Waffle House shooting, acknowledging that if the murderer had been a person of color, he would not have been offered bail.
