John Wood was born in 1964 and founded Room to Read, a non-profit focused on literacy and gender equality in education. During a vacation in Nepal, he was inspired to create the organization after seeing a school without proper reading materials. Room to Read now supports 10 countries in Asia and Africa, having helped thousands of students through opening over 18,000 libraries with 16 million books and building 2,400 schools, benefiting over 37,000 girls. Wood quit his job at Microsoft to pursue his passion of helping children through education.