Educating the World's Poorest Children

Have you wondered what kind of organization you would get if you mixed the business savvy of a corporation with the passion and heart of a non-profit? Come spend an evening with John Wood, founder and executive chairman of Room to Read, a non-profit organization dedicated to helping children across the developing world break the cycle of poverty through the power of education. At age 35, John Wood left his high-paying job as Microsoft Director of Business Development in China to create Room to Read. What started as a personal goal of delivering 3,000 books by yak to a remote Nepali village in 1999 has become an award-winning NGO providing educational resources to over 3 million children and establishing over 7,000 libraries in impoverished regions of Asia and Africa. Described as an organization that combines the heart of Mother Theresa with the scalability of Starbucks, Wood joins the Council to share how he was able to develop Room to Read into one of the fastest-growing non-profits in history and how his unique business and non-profit approach guide his vision of educating some the world’s poorest children.