Nepal Trek Leads to New Path for Former Microsoft Executive

When I was growing up in a small Pennsylvania town, the library was a sacred place for me. I’d frequently leave with armloads of books, many of which I’d devour late into the night in my bedroom. My grandmother, mother, and sister always read to me. Books and learning were deeply woven into our lives.

That early education prepared me to thrive in the corporate world. And it also laid the groundwork for a move that would forever change my life — and, I hope, the lives of thousands of poor children living in the developing world.

I started working for Microsoft in 1991 and quickly climbed the corporate ladder. I advanced to marketing director

JOHN WOOD Age: 40 First professional job: Product manager, Microsoft Corporation, Redmond, Wash. Current job: Chief executive officer, Room to Read, San Francisco

for Microsoft Australia, and, later, I was promoted to business development director for the Greater China region. Living in Beijing, I traveled through the region during a time of huge growth. I had a car and driver and lived in a beautiful home. It was a glamorous existence in the fast lane.

I enjoyed the challenging work and the many perks, but I had a nagging sense that there was more to life. I simply couldn’t accept that accumulating wealth and a lofty title was what my life was all about. Therehad to be something more.

In 1998, burned out from long hours, I took an 18-day trek in Nepal. I viewed it as a chance to unplug, unwind, and reconnect with who I was and where I was headed. The second day of the trip provided the experience that would lead me down an entirely new path. I met a headmaster who offered to show me his school in the remote village of Bahundanda. At the end of a two-hour hike, I found a dilapidated school where 80 students were crammed into classrooms designed for 20. The kids sat on long benches with no backs, balancing notebooks on their knees.

What really stunned me, though, was what they called their library. Locked away in a little-used room were a few weathered books. Most were backpacker castoffs — old Danielle Steele novels and other books totally inappropriate for young kids. Thinking about how important books had been to me as a kid, I asked the headmaster if he thought it was a problem that his students didn’t have an adequate library. He didn’t miss a beat. “Perhaps, sir, you could help us get more books?” he said. I agreed on the spot.

Upon completing the trek in Katmandu, I quickly fired off an e-mail asking about 100 friends to send any extra books for kids or teens to my parents’ home in Colorado. I expected a few hundred. I received 3,000. That outpouring of support blew me away — and gave me a clear sense that I was onto something special.

A short time later, I returned to Nepal with my father, who was then 73 years old. We strapped the 37 boxes of books on the backs of six donkeys and delivered them to 10 village schools. The reaction of the children — many of whom were holding brightly colored children’s books for the first times in their lives — felt better than anything I’d ever experienced in my life. A simple thought burst into my mind. I am so quitting my job. At that moment, what would become Room to Read was born.

When I announced I was quitting my job at Microsoft, many of my colleagues were convinced I’d lost my mind. So incredulous were some co-workers that I actually stopped telling many of them about my plans. In our society, the idea of walking away from a good-paying and high-status job is incomprehensible to many. I admit there were times I had panicky, what-the-hell-am-I-doing moments, but those passed when I thought of the potential of Room to Read to make a difference to so many children.

I became even more convinced that I had found my true calling when I learned more about the desperate conditions facing many children in the developing world. More than 100 million school-age children are not enrolled in primary school, and more than half of children in the developing world never get the opportunity to advance to a secondary school. The situation is even starker for young girls: Two-thirds of the 850 million illiterate people in the world are female.

As I tried to craft a business model for Room to Read, I quickly realized the biggest challenge would be to limit the focus. There is so much need in the developing world that the temptation is great to spread the resources. I had to remind myself I couldn’t save the world. By staying focused, I would make the most impact over the long term.

To help hone the business model, I set some clear guidelines. First, we would only work in local communities that would partner with us to make sure the project would continue making a difference after the initial investment. Secondly, we wanted to create a direct correlation between the gift from a donor and the end result. For instance, we specified that a $6,000 contribution would build a school in Nepal and that $2,000 would establish a bilingual library in one of our four countries.

Lastly, we vowed to keep overhead extremely low so the money donated would go toward schools and libraries rather than hefty administrative costs. To that end, until this year I did not draw a salary and have kept full-time staffing to a handful of dedicated people.

As I developed the program, I relied heavily on the strategic, managerial, and fiscal skills I had acquired in the corporate world. Yet, I quickly dismissed the often-heard notion that successful nonprofit groups should adhere strictly to the business models that succeed for a business like Microsoft. A nonprofit organization by its very purpose is run on different motives and has significantly different goals than a large corporation.

One of the things I do rely on from my Microsoft days is the results-oriented culture. I make very clear what I want the organization to accomplish — and urge supporters and donors to hold us accountable. I’m confident that approach has allowed us to rapidly grow. Since our inception as a nonprofit group in 2000 we have impacted the lives of more than 400,000 children by building more than 100 schools and 1,200 libraries. We’ve donated more than 440,000 books, established 45 computer and language labs, and put more than 900 girls on long-term scholarships.

The way I see it, we’re just getting started. It’s my hope that Room to Read becomes the trusted global brand for educating children in the developing world, much like Doctors Without Borders or Unicef have done in their fields. What Andrew Carnegie did for libraries and books in America, we can do for kids hungry for knowledge and better lives in the developing world. I still approach each day with the same passion as I did when the idea first clicked. The corporate world provided me with money, status, and comfort. Room to Read has offered me a true purpose for existing on this earth. It’s a trade-off I’d make again in a minute.