12 Successful People Share The Biggest Career Risk They Ever Took

Last week TIME released its annual 100 Most Influential People list, filled with luminaries who have had a major impact on the world.

We had an opportunity to attend the TIME 100 Gala at Lincoln Center in New York City, where we asked influencers: "What's the riskiest career decision you've ever made?"

Chess wunderkind Magnus Carlsen told us from the red carpet that there wasn't "particularly [any] risky decision" that he's had to make, whereas Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey (who was on last year's TIME 100 list) said he's "scared every day."

Bryan Cranston, actor

"The riskiest career decision is to go into this career. You have to be a risk taker of some degree to be able to say, 'Alright, I'm throwing it all out there. Whatever happens, happens. I want to be an actor.' "

"If that means sleeping on someone's couch for the rest of my life, then that's what that is."

Read Cranston's Time100 bio here.

Christopher Fabian and Erica Kochi, developers

Kochi: "Starting an innovation group and having a startup within a very large organization are probably the riskiest things we've ever done. There isn't really any structure to support us, but we just thought it was a good idea so we said 'Lets do it.' And thankfully, we did have support in the end."

Fabian: "I think the riskiest thing that I did last year was presenting a failure fair at the UN. We're very lucky to have the support of our executive director and people inside UNICEF who recognize that with every success is a string of failures."

"However, it's still hard to get up in front of cameras, in front of reporters to talk about the things that didn't work. But talking like that and thinking like that is really important to change the way we do development."

Read Kochi and Fabian's Time100 bios here.

Magnus Carlsen, chess wunderkind

"I decided to be a professional chess player. At that point, it wasn't a particularly risky decision, because I was already, you know, quite good."

Read Carlsen's Time100 bio here.

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