Age: 56
Occupation: Documentary filmmaker
Previous TIME 100 appearances: 0
Say you're an MIT Ph.D. who's consulted for the White House and sold your Internet start-up to Microsoft for $133 million. What do you do next? If you're Charles Ferguson you go on to make award-winning documentaries that speak truth to power, stripping bare the nation's recent overseas misadventures and financial missteps to reveal every infuriating secret. His searing documentary on the Iraq War, No End in Sight, won a special jury prize at Sundance in 2007 and was nominated for an Academy Award; Inside Job — his takedown of the bankers, CEOs and government officials whose complacency and collusion led to the financial crisis — won this year's Oscar for Best Documentary Feature.