FEATURED NOVEMBER 2008 GUEST:

John Wood, Founder and CEO: Room to Read

"You Say You Want A Revolution?"

"There is nothing with which every man is so afraid as getting to know how enormously much he is capable of doing and becoming". 

- Soren Kierkegaard

Advice On Changing the World: Stop Talking, Start Acting

If you are thinking about making some adjustments in your life to allow you to help change the world, my heartfelt recommendation is not to spend too much time thinking about it.  Just dive in.

I know that all kinds of practical considerations make this advice difficult to embrace. There might be student loans to be repaid, the need for advice from friends and family, and the desire to write a serious business plan. I am not saying that you should not do any of these things-just that you should not spend too much time on them or you will lose momentum.

The biggest risk is that a lot of people will try to talk you out of pursuing your dream. The world has too many people who are happy to discuss why something might not work, and too few who will cheer you on and say, "I'm there for you."  The more time you spend navel-gazing, the longer you give those negative gravitational forces to keep you in their tether.



As an example, I would cite our work in Sri Lanka. After the devastating tsunami, I had to prove to myself that I had the guts to follow my own advice. News reports indicated that hundreds of schools had been destroyed in Indonesia and Sri Lanka. Room to Read did not work in either of those countries, so it was difficult to decide how we could help. But I knew deep in my heart that "We don't work there, it's not our problem" was not an answer worthy of a bold, young charity that had never been willing to accept limits.

So I proposed to our team, and to our board, that we immediately launch operations in Sri Lanka, raise a million dollars to get started, and begin to identify communities whose schools had been destroyed. There was, needless to say, a Greek chorus telling me why we couldn't do this - "We don't have staff there."  "Room to Read is not licensed to work in Sri Lanka."  "We're already busy enough with our existing five countries."

On January 3, I convened an emergency call of the board of directors, and we included Erin, our chief operating officer, to gain her invaluable perspective. All of us were united in our desire to help tsunami victims, yet also scared of diving into something so new.

I made my case.

"We've been working in South Asia {Nepal and India} for over five years now. We've partnered with over fifteen hundred communities throughout Asia to get new schools and libraries built. We know how to do this. Yes, Sri Lanka will be new for us, but it's not as though we have not launched new countries before. And I think it's important to remember that Room to Read is an organization that has been built on an ethos of bold thinking and direct action. Do we want to say to these devastated communities, "Sorry, but this is not part of our business plan, so we can't help you?"

There was dead air on the phone. I was sweating. This was potentially a moment that would cause me to lose faith in our team's ability to think big about creating change. The silence was broken by a member of our Board, whose opinion I greatly respected.  "We know very little about Sri Lanka. If we want to make this decision, we should do a three-month study of the situation, then decide."

More dead air. Now I was really sweating.

Another Board member responded immediately. "With all due respect, if back in 1998 John had decided to do a three-month study of the situation in Nepal, he would have probably never even launched Room to Read. The study would have revealed so many daunting obstacles that he would have become a pessimist, and none of the great accomplishments of the last six years would have been reality. I think that we should go in."

A third member of the Board opined, "You're both right in your own way. We should move quickly because the children of Sri Lanka should not have to wait. But we have to realize that with a fast launch without a detailed study, we will hit obstacles. We should think about them in advance and plan our responses. We also need to trust our team to adjust and to figure things out, just as they always have."

Internally, I cheered, then suggested a vote. The board was unanimous in approving the immediate launch of Room to Read Sri Lanka. In our rookie year there, we began construction on 40 schools and also opened 25 libraries.

Sometimes, it's really important to move with all deliberate speed. If there is something out there that you want to do to make the world a better place, don't focus on the obstacles. Don't ask for permission. Just dive in. Don't let the naysayers get you down.

© 2008 John Wood, Founder and CEO: Room to Read

*Excerpted from Leaving Microsoft to Change the World; An Entrepreneur's Odyssey to Educate the World's Children, by John Wood: HarperCollins, 2006, pages 237-238.

John J. Wood
Founder and CEO
Room to Read

At age 35, John left an executive career track at Microsoft Corporation to
form Room to Read, a nonprofit organization that “combines the heart
of Mother Theresa with the scalability of Starbucks” to help children
across the developing world break the cycle of poverty through the
power of education. Razor-sharp business acumen honed at Microsoft,
combined with a passion to change the world makes John Wood a unique, inspiring and popular speaker with universal appeal.

John founded Room to Read out of deep concern that nearly one billion people lack basic literacy and over 75 million children in the developing world are not enrolled in school. “I was blessed with a solid education which was a wonderful foundation for my future. As a result, I had a great career at a company that encourages people to dream big dreams. I started this organization as a way to give that same opportunity to children in the world’s poorest places. Education is a hand up, not a hand out. It is within our power to be the generation that ends poverty, so we need to think big and execute flawlessly.”

Since its start in 2000, Room to Read has sponsored the opening of more than 440 schools and 5,100 multi-lingual libraries across the developing world. The organization has distributed over 4.2 million children’s books in multiple languages and supports more than 4,000 girls with longterm scholarships. John describes these results as “total tip of the iceberg” as Room to Read plans to increase this literacy network to 20,000 libraries and schools serving at least 10 million children by the year 2020. The organization currently operates in eight countries in Asia and Africa, ranging from Nepal to Sri Lanka to South Africa, and is in the process of setting up programs in Bangladesh.

John raised over $80 million of financial commitments from a “standing start” and illustrates this experience in his award-winning memoir, Leaving Microsoft to Change the World (Harper Collins 2006), a book described by Publishers’ Weekly in a starred review as “an infectiously inspiring read.” Translated into 18 languages, it is popular with entrepreneurs, philanthropists, educators, and internationalists alike, selected by Amazon.com Editor Picks as a Top Ten Business Narrative of 2006 and voted by Hudson Booksellers as a Top Ten Nonfiction title of 2006. The book was also featured during John’s appearance on The Oprah Winfrey Show and the resulting “Oprah’s Book Drive” with Room to Read raised over $1 million from viewers. Because of the positive response from viewers, the show re-aired in August 2008.

During his career at Microsoft, John ran significant parts of the company’s international business divisions, including positions as:

• Director of Marketing for the Asia-Pacific Division
• Director of Marketing for Microsoft Australia
• Director of Business Development for the Greater China region

John holds a Masters in Business Administration from the Kellogg Graduate School of Management at Northwestern University, a B.S. in Finance from the University of Colorado, and an Honorary Doctorate in Humane Letters from the University of San Francisco.

Honors

• Five-time winner of the Fast Company Magazine and Monitor Group Social Capitalist Award
• Time Magazine’s “Asian Heroes” Award, recognizing “20 People under 40 who have done something brave, bold, or remarkable” (the only non-Asian ever chosen for this honor)
• Selected as a “Young Global Leader” by the World Economic Forum (attendee of the WEF in Davos for the last four years)
• Two-time winner of the Skoll Foundation Award for Social Innovation (grants of $200,000 and $1.2 million)
• Selected as a 2007 Henry Crown Fellow by the Aspen Institute (one of only 20 leaders chosen for their potential to provide leadership at the highest levels of corporate and civic responsibility)
• Second recipient of the Draper Richards Fellowship (America’s largest fellowship for earlystage social entrepreneurs)
• Profiled by the Public Broadcasting Corporation (PBS) as one of “America’s Great Leaders”

Recent Speaking Engagements

• Clinton Global Initiative – September 2007 (New York, New York)
• Innovators at Google – October 2007 (Mountain View, California)
• American Library Association Annual Meeting – March 2008 (Minneapolis, Minnesota)
• IBM “Pulse” software conference – May 2008 (Orlando, Florida)
• The Power Within – October 2007 (Calgary and London, Canada)
• PepsiCo – January 2008 (St. Petersberg, Florida)
• TiEcon “Entrepreneurship Unbounded” (Santa Clara, CA) – May 2008

Other Notable Speaking Engagements

• Enterprise Software Conference, Sand Hill Group – July 2007 (Pebble Beach, California)
• Reading First (U.S. Department of Education) – July 2007 (St. Louis, Missouri)
• Starbucks Corporate Marketing Conference – September 2006 (Seattle, Washington)
• Microsoft Education Summit Conference – September 2006 (Seattle, Washington)
• Professional Businesswomen of California – November 2006 (Sacramento, California)
• Council on Foreign Relations – November 2006 (Washington, D.C.)

Responses to John’s Speeches

“John spoke at our 500-person Starbucks marketing conference and was an amazing inspiration to our global team. Here is someone who is literally changing the world, and he invites you to participate! He does so with humor, energy, and no guilt. If you want to hear a story that will end with a standing ovation, invite John to speak (and then donate to his organization)!"
– Anne Saunders, Senior Vice President, Starbucks Coffee Company

“John is a breath of fresh air to executives and professionals who are typically caught up in their busy lives. He connects with people’s natural desire to do good for society. John was a big hit at our Software 2004 conference, where he received a standing ovation (the only one in the history of the conference) from over 1,000 CEO’s, VP’s, and venture capitalists. He is an engaging speaker who is guaranteed to make people passionate about life.”
– MR Rangaswami, Founder and CEO, Sand Hill Group

Media

John’s work has been featured by a wide variety of major media outlets, including:

Broadcast

Daily Newspapers

Magazines

Leaving Microsoft to Change the World (Harper Collins 2006)
John’s book is notably recognized by the following:

• Amazon.com Editor’s Picks – Top Ten Business Narrative of 2006
• Hudson Booksellers – Top Ten Nonfiction Title of 2006
• Library Journal – Best Business Books of 2006
• Book Sense Picks – Book Sense Pick of the Month, September 2006
• Chapters/Indigo Bookstore – Top 100 Books of 2006
• The San Francisco Chronicle – #10 Bestseller for Bay Area Non-Fiction
• The Seattle Times - #4 Bestseller (Hardcover titles) at Queen Anne Books

To arrange a speaking engagement with John Wood, please contact Lisa Hotchkiss at Room to Read: lhotchkiss@roomtoread.org or 415.561.3331.