Diana, Princess of Wales (1961-1997)
Filed under the name Diana · July 26, 2026
Diana, Princess of Wales, is remembered above all for humanitarian work that included campaigning to ban landmines and pushing hard to reduce the stigma around HIV/AIDS at a time when a huge amount of the public still treated that stigma as acceptable, even normal. What gets me about her story is that she had every incentive to just enjoy the platform quietly and safely, and instead she used it on causes that were genuinely unpopular and uncomfortable to touch publicly at the time, not the easy, universally-beloved kind of charity work. I think a lot about platform and risk, having had a video go viral for the wrong reasons myself and learned firsthand how fast public opinion turns on anyone visible. Diana chose to be visible on purpose, on the hardest topics, not the safest ones. That's a much braver use of fame than most public figures, then or now, ever actually attempt, and it clearly mattered to the actual people those campaigns were meant to help.