WikiCat Main Characters lets you discover the popularity of people listed in Wikipedia categories. It does this by analyzing each articles' pageviews for the month/year you specify (starting in January 2017), dividing the people in the category into three tiers (lower, medium, and higher average pageviews), and sorting them by the highest increase in pageview activity for that month compared to a monthly average over the year you specify. (You can also sort by general popularity if you're just looking for the most prominent voices in each category.) You can list up to 20 people in each tier.
Each listing includes information about the pageviews as well as Google Web and Google News search links for each of the two highest pageview days in that month. Click on a listing's "More Info" button for a detail view that shows a Wikipedia snippet, a list of other high-pageview days over the last six months, and a set of official external information sources as supplied by Wikidata.
Start by keyword searching for a Wikipedia category. Sample searches: 21st century politicians, rappers from New Jersey, civil rights activists, UCLA alumni, Silicon Valley people, etc. If you find you're getting too many historical results, try adding "21st century" to your query (21st century philanthropists, for example.) If you have absolutely no idea what to search for, choose a noun and add people. Cat people, dog people, car people, beer people... After you've selected a category, you'll be prompted to choose a month and year. (It works best if you choose a complete month.) After you've chosen the category analysis will begin. If you choose a good-sized category it will take a few minutes; this program respects the Wikipedia API and has rate limiting.