John Wood was a Microsoft executive who visited a school in Nepal in 1998 and was shocked by their lack of books and resources. This inspired him to found Room to Read, a nonprofit dedicated to providing books, libraries, and schools in developing areas of Asia and Africa. Room to Read has since established over 19,000 schools, distributed over 20 million books, and benefited over 10 million children in multiple countries. Wood left his job at Microsoft to focus full-time on expanding educational opportunities through his organization.

1. JohnWood
The ManWho Left Microsoft to ChangeTheWorld
By Aditya Jayaraj, JachinThio and ZhaoTian Cheng

2. How It All Started
JohnWood was a Microsoft
executive who enjoyed the great
outdoors. On the first day of a
three-week trek in Nepal in 1998,
Wood chanced a meeting with a
local education official. Wood was
invited to visit a local school at
Bahundanda, and he did so on the
next day.

3. Wood, despite being a very
adventurous man, was also an avid
reader since his childhood. Other
children devoured chocolates, but
young JohnWood devoured books
with the same enthusiasm.
When he visited the school, he was
astonished and positively
heartbroken when he saw what could
hardly pass for a school library.The
meagre collection of tattered books
was so precious that it was locked up.
The library in Athens, Pennsylvania,
USA that Wood frequented to as a
child

4. The Effect on JohnWood
As a result of these events,Wood
returned with nearly 450 kilograms of
books. Later on, he founded an
ambitious nonprofit programme called
Room to Read in order to provide books,
schools and libraries in Nepal, and
eventually in southeast Asia, southern
Africa and the rest of the Indian
subcontinent as well.These endeavors
resulted inWood sacrificing his
respectable job as an executive at
Microsoft.
John Wood (pictured above) has a
vision of “an organization with the
heart of MotherTeresa and the
scalability of Starbucks”.

5. Soon after beginning the
project,Wood and his co-
founder Dinesh Shrestha
realised the need to expand the
scope of work beyond just
libraries and schools.They
wanted to address the fact that
many girls were not given the
privilege of education, even
when there was education
available.As a result, Room to
Read began the Girls’ Education
programme in 2000, which
targets young girls and
commits long-term to their
education.
John Wood and Dinesh Shrestha

6. Progress as of 31 December 2016
• 19,884 partner schools established.
• 20.6 million books distributed.
• 10.7 million children benefited.
• 47,870 girls supported.
• 3,476 Girls’ Education programme graduates.
Wood teaching
students.

7. Bibliography
• https://m.csmonitor.com/World/Making-a-difference/2010/0907/Once-a-high-tech-
exec-he-now-shares-his-passion-for-reading-in-Asia-and-Africa
• https://www.roomtoread.org/
• http://business.financialpost.com/executive/leadership/john-wood-i-had-to-get-
out-of-microsoft-and-make-education-for-the-worlds-poorest-children-my-job