Johnny Strange, 17, is the youngest person to climb seven summits.

This is a first. I get to feature someone who beat the world record of another young person I featured. Samantha Larson was one of our first "Young People Who Rock." She was then the youngest person to reach the Seven Summits at 18, an extraordinary feat. Now, Johnny Strange holds the the record.

At 17, he Johnny completed a journey he started with his dad five years ago. There is one climb per continent, including Mount Everest and Mount McKinley. His final summit climb was Australia's 7,310-foot Mount Kosiuszko.

Johnny didn't leave the tallest for last. He says that was because he wanted to appreciate the lone experience and not just part of the seven summit goal. At the end, he sent an email to his friends and family saying, "Never let anyone stifle your dreams no matter the feat, for if you have the heart and the courage, impossible is nothing."

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Elena Hight, 19, is an Olympic snowboarder.

I didn’t know what a “backside 900” was before I started reading about how Elena Hight became the first female to land one in the 2007 Winter X-Games. Apparently, it’s trick where a snowboarder rotates 2½ times in the air with their back facing down the mountain. It’s probably one of the most difficult things in the sport, but when I saw Elena do it, it looked easy, like she was dancing or something.

Elena grew up in Hawaii, far away from any semblance of snow, much less a snowboard. When her family moved to Idaho, her dad got her one of the first snowboards for kids when she was 6 years old. She was one of the only girls doing it, but she was hooked.

“Making a career out of it is fairly recent thing,” Elena says of a sport that’s been around since the '70s. Elena has done it though, with big-name sponsors and competing as the youngest member in her event in the 2006 Winter Olympics. As she looks to new, well, heights, she knows more people are watching the sport. “It’s a much bigger deal. A lot more pressure. But, I’ll be ready.”

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Kelly Evans, 23, reports on the economy for the Wall Street Journal.

Like many families, Kelly Evans' considered talking about money taboo. To them, financial news seemed lofty and inaccessible.

Fast-forward to 2009 and you'll find her talking about money everyday as an economics reporter for the Wall Street Journal. “Its my job to take wonky and opaque figures and make them understandable,” she says. When she started 18 months ago, there were only rumblings of a recession. Now, this 23-year-old is pulling long days and nights breaking down staggering numbers to connect the dots for the rest of us. “I take really jargon-heavy reports and turn them into ‘No one is ordering U.S. products. So that’s why U.S. manufacturing jobs are being cut. So that’s why your cousin is out of a job.’”

Kelly sees the extreme shift in the economy firsthand, and knows that her generation is feeling it big time. She advises young people to focus on skills, rather than resume-building. “The people that are thinking ahead are those who will emerge on top when things come back around, which they will.”

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Blake Taylor, 18, is the author of 'ADHD & Me: What I Learned from Lighting Fires at the Dinner Table.'

Yes, he set fire to the dinner table with contact lens solution. Yes, he stayed in on the weekends because he had no friends. Yes, he had to clean the urinals as punishment for acting out in class. But Blake Taylor is done being punished and finally ready to proudly say to the world, “Yes, I have ADHD.”

According to the CDC, 4.7 million Americans 18 or under have attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. Now 18, Taylor is the youngest person to write a memoir about living with it. He says his book, “ADHD & Me,” is the guidebook he never had growing up – a way to deal with the daily struggles from someone who has actually been there and not just studied the disorder.

Taylor is now a freshman molecular biology major at the University of California, Berkeley, where his book is used in the curriculum. Professors tout it because it’s the first time academia and the general public can see the once-taboo disorder being tackled with candor, since diagnosis only really started to spike in the 1990s. Through anecdotes about taking tests and dealing with tics, Taylor aims to tackle the often-stigmatized side effects of the disorder, which if left untreated, he says, only worsen when someone gets older. “You wouldn’t want to set fire to a table ever, but especially not when you’re 30, right?”

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The 2008 presidential election is the first that superdelegate Jason Rae will be able to vote in.

Not too many kids tell their parents who to vote for when they are 5 years old or ask their fourth-grade teacher to watch the presidential inauguration. But what would you expect from a 21-year-old superdelegate?

Jason Rae went from being a U.S. Senate page to the youngest elected representative of the Democratic National Committee while he was in high school. He actually couldn’t vote when he was first elected because he was six months shy of 18. But he wanted to represent what he calls “America’s next generation.” So, he and his friends hand-painted posters with the slogan “A ray of hope for the future.” It worked.

What about his future? Rae says, “I remember back in kindergarten saying I wanted to run for president, but I’ll settle for an elected office.” These days he is relishing the fact he’s being wooed by both sides for his coveted vote in the close Democratic race for the 2008 presidential nomination - dining with Sen. Hillary Clinton’s daughter, Chelsea, meeting with Sen. Barack Obama and chatting with the highest-profile politicians from across the country.

How will he vote? He hasn’t said, but we’ll try to get it out of him.

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Stephanie Mockler, 20, got the racing bug when she was 6 and went on to become a record-setting driver.

In real life, her first car was a Volkswagen bug when she was 16. In her racing life, Stephanie Mockler was driving quarter midget cars, tiny racecars that children can drive, at the age of 6. Now at 20, she is a record-setting driver.

Mockler became the first female to win a USAC Ford Focus Midget Series when she finished at the Indianapolis Speedrome. She is also the eighth woman in the United States Auto Club's history to win a feature race. And she is the youngest female to ever win a USAC main event.

She gets the whole "Danica Patrick" thing a lot. Patrick is a 25-year-old Indy Racing League driver. Mockler is quick to point out that not all racing is the same and that she hopes to take the NASCAR track. But one thing between them is the same, "When you put on the helmet, you're just another racer."

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Marianna Palka is an actress, writer and director.

The U.S. Drama category is one of the most prestigious at Sundance. At 26, Marianna Palka is the youngest filmmaker with "Good Dick," a modern-day fairy tale of a boy who fails in love with a reclusive girl. Palka directed and wrote "Good Dick," and she stars in the film alongside her longtime boyfriend, Jason Ritter.

Palka got to Sundance by way of Scotland. She grew up without a television, but that didn't stifle her love for entertainment. She started acting with The Atlantic Theatre Company and made films as a teenager.

Palka already has been compared to the likes of Woody Allen, using her talents in front of and behind the camera.

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Tadashi Nakamura,left, and Yasmin Fedda are both featured in the Short Film Category at Sundance this year.

The Short Film Category at Sundance is full of talented filmmakers, and Tadashi Nakamura and Yasmin Fedda, both 27, are two of the young standouts with their powerful social commentaries.

Nakamura is as a fourth-generation Japanese-American and second-generation filmmaker. His introduction to filmmaking happened at the super-ripe age of 9 days old, in a film directed by his dad, award-winning director Robert A. Nakamura. Now he stands on his own with his film "Pilgrimage," a tribute to a small group of Japanese-Americans in the late 1960s who transformed an abandoned World War II internment camp into a symbol of solidarity.

Fedda has traveled around the world to produce documentaries on subjects like the Santeria religion and colonial stipends in Syria. She is a Lebanese-Canadian filmmaker currently living in Edinburgh, Scotland, which is the scene of her latest film, "Breadmakers," about a community of workers with learning disabilities who make organic bread for local shops and cafes.

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