SUSAN WOJCICKI: Thank you
everybody for coming.
I'm very pleased to have John
Wood here, who is the founder
of Room to Read and author of
two books, "Leaving Microsoft
to Change the World," which he
came to Google before and
spoke for a book tour, and
for his latest book.
"Leaving Room to Read." We have
copies in the back for
all of you who want to
get your own version.
But I was very excited to have
John here because Room to Read
has been a charity that I have
personally supported.
And I think he's done some
really amazing things.
So as he mentioned in
his title his book,
he did leave Microsoft.
He did change the world in
a lot of different ways.
And in just 10 years, he has
opened up 1,6000 schools,
15,000 libraries.
He has distributed 12 million
books, and he has reached 7.8
million children.
And he works in Bangladesh,
Cambodia, India, Laos, Nepal,
South Africa, Sri Lanka,
Tanzania, Vietnam, and Zambia.
So that's a really impressive
list of accomplishments.
And John wound of doing
this somewhat by--
I don't know if it's
by accident.
But I'd like John to come up.
And I'm going to ask him some
questions about his
story and this book.
And then I'll open it up
to the rest of you
to hear your questions.
So let's welcome John.
JOHN WOOD: It's always amazing
how nobody wants to
sit in front row.
SUSAN WOJCICKI: Yeah.
JOHN WOOD: There's always empty
chairs in the rows.
SUSAN WOJCICKI: Yeah,
I was gonna--
JOHN WOOD: There we got one.
We got at least taker.
SUSAN WOJCICKI: Yes,
at least one taker.
And future people will come.
We'll have them sit
in the front too.
JOHN WOOD: OK.
SUSAN WOJCICKI: We'll call them
out as soon as they come
in the back door, to come
into the front.
Oh look, more people
in the front.
JOHN WOOD: Yeah.
Sit in the front row.
SUSAN WOJCICKI: So let's maybe
just start from the
beginning, if we can.
JOHN WOOD: I was
born-- no, no.
SUSAN WOJCICKI: So this happens
to me too, if you ask
me to repeat my story.
But it is really interesting.
And I'd like everyone to hear
how is it that you wound up
like being at Microsoft?
Similar to probably a lot of
people here in the room, you
were a marketing manager for
APAC at Microsoft, thinking
about changing the world
with software.
And then all of a sudden,
something happened and your
life took a totally
different course.
JOHN WOOD: Yeah.
I joined Microsoft in 1991.
I was two years out of grad
school, did my MBA.
Really had no business
being there.
I don't know if any of you over
wake up in the morning
and you kind of feel like oh my
gosh, like I really don't
know that I really belong in
this hypersmart environment.
I definitely felt that
way when I joined
Microsoft in '91.
And by '98, I was a little
bit burned out.
You know the whole seven
year itch thing.
After seven years of way too
many meetings and way too many
flights and stuff like that, I
decided off to Nepal and do an
18 day trek, just kind of clear
my head and get away
from it all, the Annapurna
circuit.
There was actually a rumor that
if you went high enough
in the Himalayas you could
escape the sound of Steve
Balmer's voice.
And I decided to give
that a shot.
No, I loved working for Steve.
I learned a lot under him.
But when I was on day two of
my trek, I met a headmaster
who wanted to show
me his school.
It was a really ramshackle,
dilapidated school, dirt
floors, no desks, 80 children
crammed in a room that
probably should not
held more than 20.
And then he said, well come and
see the school's library.
And I thought, oh, this will
be the exciting, optimistic
part of the tour.
How many of you were library
nerds as kids?
You work at Google,
so that's probably
a fairly safe question.
So I was like a total library
nerd as a kid.
So I thought this will be the
exciting part of the tour,
kids with smiles on their
faces, reading books.
Eh, totally wrong, empty room,
completely devoid of
children's books.
And I asked the head master,
how can this be?
You have 450 kids showing up.
They want to learn and their
parents want them to learn.
And the headmaster said, well
in Nepal we're too poor to
afford education.
But until we have education,
we will always remain poor.
And that just hit me like a
ton of bricks as being the
cruelest possible Catch-22 that
you have these kids who
are five years old, or six years
old, or seven years old,
and they're being told you've
lost the lottery of life.
And thankfully, the headmaster,
like me, was an
action-oriented optimist.
He said perhaps sir, you will
someday come back with books.
And I thought this would be a
great reason to make an annual
leave from Microsoft and come
back to Nepal and trek.
So I was like, yup, kind of
selfish motivation to sign up.
But I'm kind of joking a little
bit about the self
motivation.
But I grew up in a town,
small town, that
was very middle class.
We have a great school library
and we had a great community
library that had been
built in 1896.
So I thought well, here's
my pay it forward.
I'll thank the world for my
libraries, with one library.
And didn't realize we wouldn't
really stop there.
But I went back a year later
with 3,000 donated books on
the back of six rented donkeys,
and my 73-year-old
father in tow as my unpaid
right-hand man.
And it just felt really good.
And I said well, that was fun.
Like maybe we'll
keep doing it.
And that was the point
of departure.
It was that trip in '99
returning and seeing the
smiles on faces of the kids who
had never seen brightly
colored children's
books before.
The library shelves were
suddenly full.
And that's the moment I started
to kind of edge my way
to the door of Microsoft, to
think maybe my next act will
not be in tech.
Maybe it will be in something
a bit more basic.
SUSAN WOJCICKI: It's like you
read the numbers here and you
think like 7.8 million
children whose
lives you've touched.
Like do you have any stories
or like kids that really
touched you in particular, like
you saw them, you saw
they learned something,
you saw that they got
access to this book?
JOHN WOOD: Yeah.
SUSAN WOJCICKI: I mean like what
is that experience for
like one of the 7.8 million kids
and how does it really
change their life, to
be able to have the
books and the libraries?
JOHN WOOD: Yeah.
It's pretty amazing to me these
kids, I hope one day all
of you get a chance, including
you, you're always welcome to
come visit our projects.
With 1,600 schools and 15,000
libraries, there's lots of
places to go visit and meet the
kids and meet the-- not
just kids, but the parents and
the grandparents, whose lives
are being changed.
And I'll tell you a story
about a student.
But first I'll you a story about
being in Nepal with a
number of our chapter leaders
who are running fundraising
chapters all of the world.
We're very entrepreneurial.
So we've actually given birth
to 57 fundraising chapters
around the world, 12,000
people involved.
They have not quit their day
job to change the world.
They've kept their day job.
But they're changing the world
through raising funds for Room
to Read, including our San
Francisco chapter.
But the Tokyo chapter co-founder
Susan Lodge was
with me on this trip.
And Susan told a story about
being in a village where we
had a lot of girls
in our long-term
girls education program.
And as you and I both know from
our discussions, it's
depressingly inexpensive
to change a girl's
like through education.
It's $250 per girl, per year.
And so the fact that over
100 million girls in the
developing world woke up this
morning and not go to school
is to me just an absolutely
avoidable tragedy because it's
not an expensive
problem to fix.
But Susan said to me, John,
you've got me, Room to Read's
got me forever because I just
was talking a grandmother.
And she was holding my hand and
with tears in her eyes she
said, I can die now that I know
that my granddaughter is
going to get educated.
And Susan said you know,
you got a fan for life.
So there's a grandmother.
We watch parents.
And everything we do at Room to
Read is under a challenge
grant model.
The idea is you can't help
people if they don't want to
help themselves.
So we don't go into a village
and build them a library or
build them a school.
Hey, step aside local people,
we're here to help you.
We say we're going to help you,
but only if you want to
help yourself.
So the parents will put in sweat
equity to each project.
So I've watched these parents at
school openings, at library
openings, where the mothers will
come up and say, they'll
point down to the river.
That's a pretty steep decline.
And they'll say, I carried the
sandbags from the river up.
And then other parents, their
fathers will say, well I
helped to dig the foundation.
So It's very much of
a self-help model.
And those parents motivate me.
Because parents everywhere
are the same.
They want their kids to have a
better life than they've had.
And it almost always
comes to education.
If you only bequeath one thing
to your child, you probably
would want to bequeath
education.
But to land the plane, your
question with the students,
one of my favorite stories of
a student I met with last
summer, my father decided for
his 86th birthday, he wanted
to go to Zambia with me on
a trip that I was doing.
And I love my parents.
They're such adventurous
people.
And we are in this little
village in rural Zambia.
And met a kid named Girus.
He's a 13-year-old student
and really well read.
He has a Room to Read library
in his school.
And he was very articulate in
welcoming me to the library.
And officially, he was like
the head of the welcoming
committee that welcoming
our delegation.
And I talked to him at first.
I said Girus, you seem like
a very smart young man.
And he said, yes.
And so what would you like
to be when you grow up?
And Girus said, oh, I will be
the first Zambian to be
Secretary General of
United Nations.
And I said OK, that's great.
So you're learning a lot in your
library about leadership.
And he said yes, but I've also
learned that I will have to do
other things along the way.
That will not be my first job.
I said OK, what would be like
an interim kind of lily pad
you would jump to on the way
to that side of the pond?
And he, said well I will first
be president of Zambia.
And it's kind of funny
story, right?
So this was in July,
last summer.
Well in October, a couple months
later, at the United
Nations, I was a guest of Gordon
Brown, who's running
this amazing Education First
initiative for Ban Ki-moon.
And Ban Ki-moon was telling a
story about growing up in
post-war South Korea in a
village that had been
decimated by the war.
They were learning outside.
The teacher had a stick, was
drawing in the dirt.
That was their chalkboard.
They had no books.
And Ban Ki-moon said then one
day, these books showed up.
And we were really excited.
And my parents said to me,
you must read every
one of those books.
And he said we opened them up,
on the inside front cover it
says, "A Gift, From The United
Nations." Anybody getting
chills now, just thinking about
that fact that the kid
in the village with the stick
and the dirt and donated books
is now Secretary General
of the United Nations.
So I don't think Girus's story
is really that far-fetched.
And when I think of it, I think
about one of my heroes,
Nelson Mandela.
What would South Africa look
like today had Nelson Mandela
not been one of the lucky few
black South African kids to
get educated in that era?
What if Wangari Maathai
had not had education.
The Green Belt movement in East
Africa would not happened.
All these kids are out there.
We're all born with the
same gray matter.
So if we can just reach them at
a young age, I think those
Girus stories, I mean Girus
could be the next Ban Ki-moon.
We'll never know, we'll never
know unless we try to reach
every one of them.
If we don't reach them, we
know it won't happen.
But if we don't try,
we'll never know.
SUSAN WOJCICKI: So is that a
goal of yours, to reach every
one of them?
JOHN WOOD: Ultimately, yes.
Yeah.
I mean not just Room to Read,
I mean the greatest things
that happen in human
history happen
when there's a movement.
But movements have to have--
you got to have
the lead sled dogs.
You got to have like a lot of
sled dogs to pull the sled.
But we hoped to be one of
the lead sled dogs.
And our interim goal was
originally to reach 10 million
children across the poorest
parts of the world by 2020.
As you know, because I know
you read all the investor
reports we send you diligently,
we're actually on
track to reach 10 million
children five
years early, by 2015.
And to be clear, we're not a
movement of billionaires.
They're welcome.
But we're not a top-down
model.
We don't have no celebrities
involved.
But it's just ordinary,
average people
who are coming together.
And we've reached 7 abd 1/2
million kids already.
We'll reach 10 million
kids by 2015.
And then from there, I want to
start sentences with the words
"every child."
Every child gets a
chance to read.
Every child gets a
habit of reading.
Every girl child gets to go to
school, alongside the boys.
Because in the developing world
today, about 40% of
girls don't go to school.
And that's just a shame.
So ultimately, we want to
reverse the notion that any
child can ever be told again,
you were born in the wrong
place, at the wrong time, to
the wrong parents, and you
therefore did not
get educated.
We think that notion belongs in
the scrap heap of history.
It might take 30 or 40 years
to get it there.
But boy, if we could do that,
that's like the whole
Archimedes, give me a lever long
enough and I can move the
Earth, that would be I
think Earth moving.
Will be, will be Earth moving.
SUSAN WOJCICKI: Definitely.
No, it will.
It definitely will.
So I understand you started one
school sort of by accident.
You went there.
You thought though like well,
I'll just go there on my
annual trek.
But then you actually wound up
creating 1,600 schools and
15,000 libraries.
So how did that happen?
How did it happen that you
went from one to a lot?
And maybe tell us a little
about scaling?
Like at Google, we're really
good about scale.
And I think one of the things
that's really impressive about
you is you've been able to take
something that you did
once and actually scale
it many, many times.
So how did that happen?
JOHN WOOD: I think that to
really explain it I have to
make sure I just use the word
"we" as I often as I can.
Because I've always said I don't
want to be the leader of
an organization.
I want to be one of
many, many, many
leaders of a global movement.
So that requires you to A,
hire smart; B, recruit
volunteers in a really,
really smart manner.
Delegate, delegate,
delegate, right.
Founders have a duty to get out
of the way with certain
things that they do well
and don't do well.
And if you ask one of my team,
they can probably give you a
really long list of the stuff
that I don't do very well.
One thing that I happen to do
well, according to my board,
is I'm a good rainmaker.
And they think I'm a decent
public speaker and they think
I'm pretty good with
the media.
So about five years ago, I faced
the choice of do you
want to be CEO or do you want to
backfill that position and
go be a full-time ambassador?
And I write in the book about
that because no founder's
journey is done until they
actually kind of extract
themselves from that position.
And so that was for
me, a tough thing.
But one of my mentors, a banker
Goldman Sachs, he said
look, the minute you're not CEO,
what are you going to do?
It's like you're going to get
your butt on a plane, you're
going to fly around the world.
You're going to raise money,
you're going to speak, you're
going to raise money, and
you're going to speak.
And the Earth's is going to spin
faster, the more times
you can circle it, telling the
Room to Read story and
encouraging people
to get involved.
So I think for me, we have a
great CEO, Erin Ganju, like
me, a business person,
ex-Goldman, ex-Unilever, a
brilliant woman.
She's hired out a
management team.
So we can get a lot more
done because of that.
But I think for us, a lot
of it was just kind of--
it's like a law of
just compounding.
We said, let's do 10 libraries
our second year, then let's
try to do 40, and let's
try to do 100, and
let's try to do 1,000.
I don't know that there's
any secret sauce to it.
A lot of it for us is
just the execution.
A lot of it is not being shy
about asking for funding.
Because I mean how many of you
know an NGO that you love
that's perpetually cash
strapped like
every one of us, right?
So a lot the NGO world, I think
they treat fundraising
as kind of a dirty little side
business that they have to be
kind of embarrassed about.
And we're not at all.
I love going out and
telling people--
Katie's here.
When Katie was at the University
of Miami and they
me had come speak, Miami of
Ohio, the colder, but better
Miami, no offense to
our friends in
Florida, but I love them.
And as I said to the students,
you guys if you want, you can
build a school in Nepal
and go visit it.
It only costs $35,000.
And there was some kind
of nervous chuckling.
I go start with the alums, start
with the professors,
start there.
And within like, I don't know, a
three weeks. they had raised
money to build a school.
And that was $35,000.
And they're really
proud of that.
And hopefully that's going to
continue a tradition year
after year after year.
But I go to technology
conferences, I go to
investment banking conferences,
and I say every
one of you in this room who is
educated, you would not be you
without education.
I would not be me.
This is a chance to
pay it forward.
$5,000 for a classroom library,
or $35,000 for a
school, or $250 for a girl
to go to school.
We've just got really good
at kind of productizing,
pitching, and we pitch
persistently.
SUSAN WOJCICKI: When
we talked, I was
impressed about the data.
And how like you use data and
you've taken a lot of things
that you've learned from like
running in a business world
and apply that to schools.
Like you told me some statistics
about like well if
the girl lives like this far
away, then like this much cost
for her bicycle or this much--
so maybe you can tell us a
little bit like data and how
you guys use that?
We're also a very data
driven company.
And it's interesting to see
how you've applied this to
building schools globally.
JOHN WOOD: I am a very big
believer from my time in
business that what gets
measured gets done.
I know I'm preaching to the
choir here on that one.
So we try to measure every
single thing we do.
And we're fortunate--
SUSAN WOJCICKI: It
sounds familiar.
JOHN WOOD: --that we have
some great supporters
who helps us do it.
The Gates Foundation funds
all of our evaluations,
cross-program, cross-country,
under a six year grant.
So we can hire independent
outside evaluators.
You want to have independent
evaluators, right?
Because those evaluators should
not be on your org
chart, reporting in to you.
The should be independent
outsiders.
They go out and they make
random, unannounced spot
checks on our facilities
and they collect data.
Is there a checkout system
in place in the library?
Are kids using it?
How many books are going
home with the kids?
We do samples in the places
where we do literacy training,
assessments to see sample
schools which doe have a Room
to Read library versus the
schools that do have a Room to
Read library.
We just got a report last
week from Bangladesh.
And you look at number of words
per minute a child can
read, control school, a
Room to Read school.
Well, OK that's great.
They're reading lots of words.
Do they comprehend?
So you ask them some
comprehension questions.
How do they score at the control
schools, how do they
score at the Room
to Read schools?
Girls' education, we look at
the percentage of girls who
passed to the next grade every
year, a very simple assessment
of whether it's working
or not.
But if you think about this for
a minute, if you're born a
girl who's poor, in a rural
village, in one of the world's
50 poorest countries, to
uneducated parents, you have
five strikes against you.
The world would expect
you to fail.
Yet, two years ago,
97% of our girls
passed to the next grade.
Last year it was 96% We went out
and did a survey last year
to figure out what percentage of
the girls who had finished
secondary school, like what
are they doing now?
They finished secondary
school.
That's great.
Now, what are they doing?
We found that 64% of them are
now enrolled in university or
tertiary education.
That is a rate of attainment
higher than some schools in
the developed world.
And to be clear, we're not
saying congratulations.
You've graduated secondary
school.
Here's your Room to Read
college scholarship.
We're saying congratulations,
you're on our own.
Good luck.
Find a government scholarship
scheme, work by day, go to
school by night or vice versa.
And we work with these girls on
their life skills to give
them the confidence.
So they're going and they're
applying for these
scholarships.
So they're working.
And they're are in school.
And I think great because as we
know, that's how a middle
class begins to form, when not
just boys, but also when girls
get educated and go
on to university.
AUDIENCE: But all of your
schools are co-ed.
Is that right?
JOHN WOOD: Yes.
SUSAN WOJCICKI: So maybe you can
tell us a little bit about
philosophy there and why you
think that's so important?
JOHN WOOD: I think that if look
at the world today and
you look at a situation like
Malawa's in Pakistan where
girls are being harassed or shot
for going to school or
you look at places in the
world where people are
throwing acid on girls, and just
really bad stuff happens
all throughout the world.
And my own personal belief is
that a lot of the reason for
that is that boys and girls
just don't go to
school side by side.
They don't grow up in
relatively normal
circumstances where boys and
girls are in the classroom
together from kindergarten
through grade one, through
grade two, through
grade three.
And so the boys haven't really
seen the girls achieve
academically.
And when all these girls are
not in school, well then
society starts to really devalue
the women and the
girls because they didn't
go to school.
And I think we have to
not just change--
this whole thing about women's
empowerment, it can't be a
women's issue.
Men, we've got to
enlist in this
battle for gender equality.
Not just because it's the
right thing to do.
I think it was Hillary Clinton
that said it's
not a women's issue.
It's a human rights issue.
I know for myself if somebody
ever came up to me and said,
women are dumb, women are
inferior, I would have all
this case data to reject that
notion, my educated
grandmother, who read to me,
God bless her; my educated
mother; my educated older
sister; all the girls in my
school who kicked my butt
academically and
were top of the class.
I don't think that boys and
girls going to school, as
somebody said, is going to solve
every single problem.
But I think if you actually have
that be the new normal
from age five, that's going to
do a lot to take these forces
of misogyny and these forces of
sexism and turn them around
in a really, really
significant way.
SUSAN WOJCICKI: And now that
there's the internet, how do
you think that's going to change
books ands libraries
for schools globally?
I mean you could imagine
it could be easier.
You just like download
the books.
You don't actually have
to ship them anymore.
I mean do you see like a world
where you're actually
installing digital libraries in
all of these locations and
like just getting files?
JOHN WOOD: I think in the
medium term, yes.
I think in a short term, there's
a risk really of
putting the cart before
the horse.
And also different things are
going to work in different
places based upon
circumstances.
You look at something like Khan
Academy, absolutely fantastic.
But there's certain
preconditions you have to have
to actually have
that be useful.
Like it helps to have
electricity.
And it helps to have a computer
and it helps to have
broadband and it helps
to be literate.
So what Room to Read is doing
is a lot of the stuff we're
doing is kind of the really
early stage foundational stuff
of saying let's get kids from
grade one to have really well
trained teachers.
Because at the end of the day,
you want your kids to have
good teachers.
Let's have them have
well-stocked libraries.
Let's have literature in
the mother tongue.
Because publishers don't publish
books in languages
read by predominantly
poor people.
We should talk about
that a little bit.
And the reality is for us is
we can open a library for
about $5,000.
The average library serves
400 children.
So you're looking at a cost of
$12.50 per child reached.
So the low-tech solution is
actually really cost effective.
Books don't need
to be rebooted.
Books don't have operating
systems that degrade.
I mean really $1 a book for
localized publishing, it's a
very, very cost effective
solution.
And for us, it's not because
we're Luddites, but it's
really because we're working
on some really deep
foundational issues of
is a child literate?
Is a child going to be able
to learn to read?
But once that happens, I think
what ends up happening is
those kids should
be the same as--
I don't want to speak
for any of you.
But I'm platform agnostic.
I love to read books.
I love to read magazines.
If I'm going to long trip and
I'm going read the Steve Jobs'
bio, I'm likely to actually put
it on my device because
it's going to save me
from carrying around
a seven pound book.
But I think the key thing is
literacy, a habit of reading
from a young age, are
preconditions for any
technology solutions to actually
be able to work.
And just think about this for
yourself, if you hadn't gotten
literate at a young age, odds
are really strong you would
not be working here.
And I think we have to remind
the world of that [INAUDIBLE].
Because I read you're
a tough interviewer.
No, but I do want to say that
because I do want to remind
that 98% of the illiterate
people in the world today are
in the developing world.
And we haven't totally cracked
literacy in the developed
world, but we've come
really, really far.
But in the developing world,
it's 49 our of 50 illiterate
people live in the
developing world.
SUSAN WOJCICKI: One of the
things I did not list in all
of these accomplishments is
the fact that in addition
you're also publishing books--
JOHN WOOD: Yes.
AUDIENCE: SUSAN WOJCICKI:
--in 20 languages.
JOHN WOOD: Right.
SUSAN WOJCICKI: And you sort
of alluded a little bit to
this about needing to do that.
So like maybe tell us a little
bit more like in addition to
creating libraries and schools,
you also had to
become a publisher?
JOHN WOOD: So what
happened to us--
in the new book, which by the
way it on sale here today--
SUSAN WOJCICKI: See.
JOHN WOOD: Just so
we practice.
SUSAN WOJCICKI: Yes.
JOHN WOOD: In the new book, one
of my favorite chapters--
SUSAN WOJCICKI: They're
subsidized, a big rule.
JOHN WOOD: I know.
I'm stocking up, man.
You know, you guys here at
Google get this big cheaper
than my author price.
I have to pay Penguin $17
a copy if I want to give
a copy to my mom.
You're getting it for $10,
so I hope you stock up.
Arbitrage.
Where were we?
SUSAN WOJCICKI: How you
became a publisher?
How you became a publisher,
very apropos.
JOHN WOOD: Hi, Paul.
Remember to tell you
my Paul [? Hare ?]
story at some point too,
of the interview.
No.
So what happened to us was that
I wrote a chapter in this
new book, called "Searching for
Seuss." How many of you
were Dr. Seuss fans as kids?
Oh yeah, like 90% for
that question.
So in the developing world, you
actually can't find the
equivalent of Dr. Seuss.
Because the for-profit
publishers don't want to
publish books for children in
languages where people live on
less than $2 a day.
And if you have $2 in your
pocket, think about what if
that was all you had for food,
shelter, clothing, medicine.
That's it.
You don't have anything
left over for books.
So the for-profit publishers
don't publish children's
literature in Nepalese, Khmer,
Lao, Zulu, Setswana, Xhosa,
Sinhalese, Tamil, [INAUDIBLE],
Rajasthani, Bengala.
I gave you a really depressing
long list of languages.
But this for me is like
where the supply
chain of poverty starts.
Because if kids don't have books
in their mother tongue,
how are they growing up literate
and how they going to
grow up in a habit of reading?
We learned this because we
were talking about data
collection, what gets
measured gets done.
In 2003, we went out and asked
our customers, we asked the
little people, how
are we doing?
What would cause you to
libraries more often?
Would it be longer hours, open
at night, open on weekends?
The number one answer kids gave
us, 52% of kids said more
books in the mother tongue.
More books in Nepalese, more
books in Vietnamese.
Well, that sounds like a giant
no-brainer, of course they
want books in the language
they speak at home.
But the for-profit publishers
don't publish because there's
no profit incentive.
So we looked at the data.
And at Room to Read,
we don't sit around
and whinge or whine.
We don't talk about problems.
We act about solutions.
And so we went out to the Skoll
Foundation, and thank
goodness Jeff Skoll has a team
and Sally Osberg have a team
that takes risks.
They gave us $100,000 to go
search for Seuss, to go find
the Dr. Seuss or the Drs.
Seuss, starting with Nepal, but
eventually in other languages.
And what we found was this
absolutely, incredibly
creative community that existed
in these countries,
authors and artists with
story ideas, but
nobody had ever asked.
We found a group called the
Nepalese Society for
Children's Literature.
We don't know what the heck they
had been doing all those
years because they hadn't been
producing much children's
literature.
But we said, we have the money
to produce 10 books.
And within a month, our local
team in Nepal had 67
manuscript ideas.
So we already had a backlog
of manuscript ideas.
And so we basically decided we
would become a publisher, not
on a for-profit basis.
And the thing that we wanted
to do, we said it would be
easier to just translate
existing children's books,
like to just overlay some Khmer
script on "Clifford the
Big Red Dog." But we decided
that we should actually do
original literature.
Because what's the point of
having a book about the White
Christmas so that kids in Zambia
can be confused about
caroling, and eggnog's,
and snowflakes.
Or have a book where mom drives
up in the Volvo station
wagon to the suburban ranch home
and kids in Nepal like
don't know what a suburban
home is.
And so we become a publisher
in local language.
And those first 10 books,
from little
things, big things grow.
We've now published 850
original titles.
We're going to publish
our 1,000
original title this year.
And it's local, local, local,
local authors, local artists,
local editors, and
local content.
Now, what's great about that
then is we also control the
printing presses.
And it's literally
$1 per book.
So we even have like
10-year-olds, who for their
birthday will say if everything
can give me $10,
Room to Read can produce
100 book.
So the local area publishing
thing took off from that.
And it's great.
I tell a story in the book--
did can you indulge me in
one more quick story?
One of my favorite in the new
book is called "Baby Fish Goes
to School." So if "Searching for
Seuss" as a chapter, was
about the problem.
"Baby Fish Goes to School"
is a chapter where the
solution comes up.
And what happened is not just
adults wanted to write
children's books, but a lot of
the students came up to us and
said they had story ideas.
And so in Sri Lanka, two teenage
girls, 13 or 14 years
old, came up the concept that
they wrote and illustrated,
called "Baby Fish
Goes to School."
And it was all about a little
fish who lives in the pond.
And every day watches the
animals walking along the side
of the pond, going to school.
He sticks his head above the
water and says, where you guys
go every day?
And horse says, we
go to school.
We love it.
And the pig says, we sing
songs and play games.
And the chicken says,
we get to eat curry.
And we get to dance and take
naps and read books.
And Baby Fish is like wow,
that's fantastic.
I want to go to school.
Well, that night it
tells mother.
And the mother says, you
can't go to school.
Why not?
Well, the school is on land.
And Baby Fish is like OK,
that totally sucks.
That's a loose translation
from Tamil language.
But the animals thankfully are
action-oriented optimists.
They're not talking
about the problem.
They're acting in
the solution.
They go out-- and maybe a bonus
point for anybody who
guesses what they do?
AUDIENCE: [INTERPOSING VOICES]
JOHN WOOD: Yeah, exactly.
The bonus points are redeemable
for absolutely nothing.
Yeah, the animals buy a
fishbowl, they scoop up Baby
Fish, they walk to the fish's
school, plunk him down in
front of the chalkboard
and voila, Baby
Fish goes to school.
And I don't think you could have
invented that story kind
of from an ivory tower
where I live.
It was the Sri Lankan
teenage girls.
And actually one of them now,
it's fantastic, the girl that
illustrated it is now
in her third year of
art college in Colombo.
And still continues to ping me
on Facebook with her updates.
I mean on Google+.
You can actually look her up.
If you have actually
Bing her--
come on, cheap tech humor.
We're all friends.
We're all friends, yeah, OK.
SUSAN WOJCICKI: They didn't
think it's so funny.
JOHN WOOD: I practiced that line
in front of the mirror
last night.
Oh, I'm going to slay them
with my Bing joke.
SUSAN WOJCICKI: So what can
everyone do to help?
So you work at a company
here, like
everyone here in the room.
You talked about your different
volunteer chapters.
Like what are the different ways
for people to be involved
and people to contribute
to the cause and
the movement then?
JOHN WOOD: I would go back to
the whole time, treasure,
talent, the three T's that
nonprofits talk a lot about.
So if you have talent, we
can put you to work.
We're currently looking for
somebody who can help us with
YouTube APIs.
And we need an expert
in that to help our
online marketing team.
I'm not sure exactly what
they need to do.
But they asked me to pitch the
fact that we need somebody who
knows YouTube really well.
There's other talents.
We have a great relationship
with Salesforce.com.
All of our projects reside up in
the cloud under an all you
can eat, free license for all
500 plus of our employees.
It saves us so much money.
But we actually have Salesforce
engineers who
volunteer their time.
They're just down the
street from us.
They come in and they actually
work with our team on our
global solutions database.
So talent, we need talent.
My email is john@
roomtoread.org.
I'm happy to be the
clearinghouse for you if you
have ideas on that.
Getting involved in our
fundraising chapters, right?
We have these fundraising
chapters around the world.
We would love to have a
Googleplex fundraising chapter.
Why not take some of your free
time and say let's just get
our friends together.
Let's use that company
matching.
Let's build a couple of
libraries or a couple of
schools somewhere in the
developing world and maybe
actually go visit them.
And so turn that not just into
philanthropy, but turn it into
a travel opportunity.
Maybe if you have kids or you
want to do an adventure with
your parents, like I do with my
parents on a regular basis,
you can do that.
And I would say don't be shy.
You have corporate matching.
Your stock is doing all right.
It would be great to have more
support from within Google.
And lots of other stuff.
If you have ideas, pitch
us on your ideas.
If you have nieces, nephews,
kids, we've got a great
program called Students
Helping Students.
We'd love to get students
involved in our work and
inculcate them into a habit of
philanthropy from a young age.
Which really is great, because
it only teaches kids to be
philanthropic, but it also
teaches them business skills,
selling skills, social skills
when those kids are going out
and doing fundraising events.
So anything you can do.
If you have time, if you have
treasure, if you have talent,
we're open to all
of those things.
SUSAN WOJCICKI: That's great.
And what percentage of the funds
go to the actual kids?
JOHN WOOD: We actually deploy
$0.83 on the dollar directly
to programs.
I don't know if you guys
know Charity Navigator.
It's kind of like the SEC of
the fundraising world.
And they give from one
to four stars.
And we've received four stars
every single year they've
rated us, which is the seven
consecutive years
they've been around.
And only 2% of nonprofits in
America have achieved seven
consecutive years of Charity
Navigator four-star ratings.
So at $0.83 on the dollar,
we're amongst the elite.
And one of the questions
we get is well,
how do you do that?
Because you can't run
on no overhead.
I mean having a CFO is
considered overhead.
But you got to have a CFO or
else you're going to turn in
one of these silly nonprofits
that unravel because they have
no financial control.
So overhead is a bit
like cholesterol.
I think there's good cholesterol
and there's bad
cholesterol, just
as there's good
overhead and bad overhead.
So we've done all kinds
of creative things.
One of chap;ters in the book
is called "No Range Rovers,
The War on Overhead." And it's
all about saying let's not
spend money on these shiny
$75,000 vehicles that aid
workers love to drive around in
or be driven around in by
their driver.
Let's eliminate that expense
because the $75,000--
who's good at math here.
We're at Google.
Who's good at math?
SUSAN WOJCICKI: Come on.
Don't be shy.
JOHN WOOD: Come on,
[? Paul Hare. ?]
Good.
I'll put Paul on the spot.
So Paul, a Range Rover in
Cambodia costs $75,000.
We can print one local
language book for $1.
How many books do
you sacrifice--
this is your warm-up question.
AUDIENCE: I'm going to
take a rough guess.
It's somewhere around 75,000.
JOHN WOOD: Perfect.
OK.
Second question.
A girl's education, a girl's
scholarship for
one year costs $250.
How many girls don't go to
school this year if we buy
five Range Rovers?
AUDIENCE: Need help.
JOHN WOOD: OK.
How many girls don't go to
school if we buy one?
AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE].
JOHN WOOD: 300.
Oh my gosh, you guys
need to hire me.
I'm better on math.
No, kidding.
Sorry, Paul.
But 300 girls.
So if you buy like five Range
Rovers per country, but you're
working in ten countries like
we are, literally you're
cheating tens of thousands of
girls out of education.
So we basically looked at it
and said, let's figure out
every single way we
can save money.
So one day I was in a board
meeting and one of my mentors,
Muneer Satter, a Goldman banker,
was telling me that he
has been flying so much that
he had 3 million miles on
American Airlines.
And I kind of rubbed my hands
together greedily and said
what's your password?
And he gave it to me.
And I ran him down.
I ran him down.
He's got zero miles in his
account right now.
Because I wanted to fly around
the world for free.
And I told that story at the
Barclays Asia Forum.
And all these Barclays
bankers said, we're
competitive with Goldman.
We're going to compete
mile for mile.
Every time they donate a mile,
we're going to donate a mile.
Well, then we needed
hotel rooms.
Because you don't want
to just fly for free.
You want to stay for free.
So Nicky from our team in San
Francisco, they closed a deal,
Cindy and Nicky closed a deal,
150 free room nights from
Hilton, per year.
But we needed office space where
we raise money, Tokyo,
London, Sydney, Hong Kong.
Those are expensive cities
to open offices in.
Credit Suisse said fine, we're
just going to give you some
desk space.
And so they're are landlord.
We don't pay a cent.
Actually, they pay us every
year through a grant.
So we get a grant every year,
but also we get-- and that's
kind of what I said, the time,
treasure, talent, maybe one of
your talents here in this room
is figuring out how to help us
to save money.
This year, Lenovo has a deal
with Room to Read.
They're giving us 500 laptops.
So every single employee around
the world will have a
brand new laptop.
Now, think about that
for a second.
At $1,000 plus a laptop, every
laptop represents four years
of a girl's education.
So in a certain sense, I'm
really lucky that I grew up
with parents who were like
on a really tight budget.
Because my parents always taught
me to make the dollar
go as far as possible.
And there's so many examples in
the book of how we do that.
So no matter what your cause
or what your passion,
definitely read that chapter
and share it with
boards you're on.
Because there's so many ways the
nonprofit world can save
money on overhead so that more
money goes to the programs.
They just have to build that
muscle of constantly asking
people for favors.
How many miles do you
have by the way?
AUDIENCE: SUSAN WOJCICKI:
Yeah.
We discussed actually
my miles.
Yeah.
He's very true to his word.
And when we meant, that
was one the questions.
So yes, so we're working on him
donating some of my miles.
I have a lot.
JOHN WOOD: Good.
Which airline?
No, I'm kidding.
SUSAN WOJCICKI: Yes I do.
American.
JOHN WOOD: Actually, I told that
story once in Hong Kong.
And somebody in the audience
was like--
in Hong Kong, they're flying on
Cathay and they're flying
on Singapore Airlines.
And someone goes oh my God, he
had to fly 3 million miles on
American Airlines.
SUSAN WOJCICKI: I think
other people
here have a few questions.
So I don't want to be a hog.
We have a microphone.
AUDIENCE: Hey, I just had
a quick question.
Well, no.
I have several questions that
kind of interrelate.
The first being who
are these teachers
that are in your school?
Were they kind of in the
community before, were they
trained as teachers, or are they
just coming out of grade
12, which is very
often the case.
And then also--
JOHN WOOD: Can I answer
that question first?
SUSAN WOJCICKI: Yeah, sure.
JOHN WOOD: I only have
so much brain power.
So one of gating criteria for
countries that we work in,
along with provinces or
districts within a country, is
does the ministry of education
have its act together in terms
of teacher training colleges?
And are there enough trained
teachers coming out that we'll
be able to actually put them
into the schools and will the
government actually pay those
teacher salaries?
Because everything we do is
under tripartite agreement
where Room to Read helps to
build the school, the
community donates the labor, but
the ministry of education
actually supplies the teachers
and pays their ongoing salary.
So for us, the minister of
education partnership is a
really critical part
of what we do.
Now, we also then do additional
workforce
development--
I don't like to use the
word training--
but kind of professional
development for teachers.
So we actually work with them on
how do you run an effective
library, how do you get kids
in habit of reading, how do
you teach kids to decode words,
how do you teach kids
to learn script like Khmer?
So we're doing a lot of literacy
training, writing
training, habit of reading and
librarian training also kind
of top up the skills those
teachers have.
AUDIENCE: Great.
I think that answered several
of my questions too.
But in addition to that--
so you're working mainly with
government schools.
And I know at least in Zambia,
I have first-hand hand with a
lot of community schools, which
are on the rise and
basically cost way less than
government schools.
But you get more teachers that
are coming out of grade 12.
You get more undertrained
teachers that don't
necessarily get paid enough to
have the motivation to teach
as well or to be as dedicated
to their students.
So do you see kind of like a
movement in that direction for
Room to Read or is that
on the horizon?
JOHN WOOD: Not really.
Because I've done as much
study as I can.
And I read James Tooley's book
and Fernando Reimers from
Harvard Graduate School of
Education sits in our board.
So we've kind of looked
at all this stuff.
But the problem with the kind
of the community school
approach that's happening in
developing world is there
hasn't really been any
organization--
and if I'm wrong, please
tell me and email me--
but that's actually scaled
in a significant way.
So you have a lot of this little
community run schools,
but almost none of them have
actually scaled beyond a
certain number of locations.
And what we're about at Room to
Read is really about scale,
but scale with quality.
But also to be sustainable.
And the only way these schools
will be sustainable, in our
experience, in the long run,
is that the community is
signed up to run them, but the
government is also signed up
to continue to support them.
So as you get more students
coming in and
you need more teachers--
so our investors don't have to
have the ongoing costs of
paying the teachers.
The government is actually
building
that into their budget.
And that lets us actually
leverage that local
government's money.
AUDIENCE: So I guess one of my
questions was kind of around--
well, one of the things that
struck me in reading the first
book was how important having
a focus on results was.
You got a lot of the results,
you published them in your
email signature, and you
made it very prominent.
And in kind of looking at a lot
of the other nonprofits,
it seems that one of things
that helped you succeed
tremendously was your first-time
business experience
and then translating that
focus on results and
efficiency to the
nonprofit world.
For a lot of the nonprofits that
are kind of focusing on
efficiency gains and trying
to kind of improve their
operations, do you think it's
as easy to help those
organizations improve, as just
having more business oriented
people apply their knowledge to
the nonprofit world or do
you think there's more of
a systematic shift?
You talked a little bit about
expenditures and some of those--
JOHN WOOD: OK.
Can you rephrase?
SUSAN WOJCICKI: Yeah.
So the question was basically
you'd have a lot of success
because of being very data
driven and from the experience
that you've had coming from
the business world.
And so the question was--
AUDIENCE: It's a little bit
about do you think that you
need more people from
the business world?
SUSAN WOJCICKI: Do you need more
people from the business
world in order to have
nonprofits be able to benefit
from some of those
business skills?
JOHN WOOD: I think it helps.
But I should also give like full
credit for the fact that
a lot of our staff have
trained in education.
And you can't have too
many business people.
But you have to have people who
actually have trained as
educators, who have trained and
have pedagogical ideas,
who have trained about what are
the issues for girls and
women to keep them in school.
So too many business people
probably would be a bad idea.
But I think too few is
also a bad idea.
So my hope is that more and more
people may as well get in
and say, OK, we're going
to make sure
that we actually have--
and a lot of this stiff the
business people do is like the
boring stuff, right?
It's like we have to have
an audit committee.
I haven't put you
to sleep yet.
But you have to have an audit
committee because you have to
audit early.
You have to audit often.
If there's financial
malfeasance,
you got to find it.
You got to cut it off
at the source.
And so there's a lot of stuff
that I think business leaders
can do in the nonprofit space
that will help the whole
sector to be more efficient.
And I think the more efficient
the sector is, I think
the pie will grow.
Because if people see inspiring
examples, and it
could be Kiva, it could be
charity, water, it could be
Room to Read, as people see
those things that work, I
think more money gets
attracted in.
The ones that don't work very
well are doing in a disservice
to the rest of us because that
makes it too easy for the
cynics to be cynical, if they
see one more nonprofit that's
kind of playing hanky panky
with their books.
So I think there's definitely
a role for
more business people.
But also, I think we just can't
forget the fact that you
also need people who have
actually trained.
Like, I'm not an educator.
So we better have a lot of
those in our team or else
we're in trouble.
SUSAN WOJCICKI: Next question?
AUDIENCE: So kind of going off
of that, I think the beautiful
thing is that there's tons and
tons of nonprofits out there
kind of working towards
a great mission.
But sometimes they can
overlap and work
towards the same mission.
So what do you feel kind of
separated Room to Read to
allow you to scale, to kind
of stand out and really be
successful compared to some
people that are also working
towards literacy?
JOHN WOOD: Yeah, well actually
I can play on that question
because a lot of our success at
Room to Read is because we
have found really clever ways
to partner with other NGOs.
I think there's way too much
reinvention of the wheel in
this sector.
There's 1,2 million NGOs
registered in America alone.
And like 90% of them run on
budgets of less than a quarter
million dollars a year.
So think about the duplication
there, that everyone of them
needs to balance their bank
statement, and publish an
annual report, and
have a website.
And I think many times that NGOs
find smart ways to work
together, you can get
a lot more done.
I'll give you just two quick
examples of that.
When Room to Read launched in
Uttarakhand in northern India,
there is a group called CHIRAG,
the Central Himalayan
Rural Action Group.
They had opened over
100 schools.
But none of their schools had
libraries or very few of their
schools had functioning
libraries.
So we said great.
This is fantastic.
You've put down these schools
that might have cost $40,000
to $50,000 to build.
On a $5,000 budget we can come
in and put in the library and
make your schools
more effective.
Another one, how many you have
heard of the "Girl Rising"
film that's coming
out next month?
So we are one of the
participants in "Girl Rising."
And in this film they profile
a girl named Suma, who was
formerly a household
slave in Nepal.
They have this terrible
oppressive system called the
Kamlari system where lower
caste girls are sold into
indentured servitude to be
household servants for the
middle class.
Their parents get a payment
of like $20 per year, just
sickening to me.
But these girls deserved
to be freed.
Well, we wanted to be part
of that because there's a
movement now to say that's a
barbaric 9th century practice.
Let's get beyond it.
But we don't know
how to do that.
But thankfully there's a group
in Nepal called the Nepalese
Youth Opportunity Foundation.
Som Paneru runs it.
A fantastic guy, I've
known for years.
They know how to do it.
So they went out and agitated
they started freeing these
girls, 100, 200, 300, 400.
Well, what do you do with
the nine-year-olds or
ten-year-olds that weren't
going to school?
Well, she wants to
go to school.
We better get in school.
So we based partnership, where
they free, we educate.
It's a bit more complicated
that that.
But let's just keep it simple.
They free, we educate.
We went out and I pitched
a banker at Barclays.
He said my wife and I will fund
every single girl you can
get in that.
Don't stop at 400, don't stop
at 500, don't stop at 600.
Today, over 700 girls have
been free through that
partnership.
So NYF frees them, Room
to Read educates them.
And one of the girls, Suma, who
will be featured in the
"Girl Rising" film, just about
over a year ago, there was a
film that was shot, the "Girl
Rising" film, and got shown to
Tina Brown who runs the Women
in the World Conference.
And in the film, Suma was
singing a song she wrote to
her parents to say, why do you
educate your sons, but oppress
your daughters?
And the song was expressing to
her parents her feelings about
don't ever do this
to me again.
Well, Tina Brown saw the film,
or somebody on Tina's staff, I
don't know, saw the film and
said we need to Suma to come
to New York and sing her song to
open the Women in the World
Conference.
It was incredible.
She sang in Nepalese.
There were the supertitles,
like in the opera.
She brought down the house.
Well then somebody from the
State Department saw it and
said well, Secretary Clinton's
staff has suggested that Suma
should come back and end the
conference on the same note,
in re-sing that song.
So in our office in New York,
where I work out of, we have
seen these photos of Suma, who
3 and 1/2 years ago was a
household slave.
And here she is with Meryl
Streep, here she is with
Chelsea Clinton, here she is
with Sheryl Sandberg, here she
is with Hillary Clinton.
And I just love that, just
like that Girus,
here you've got Suma.
That's the potential
these kids have to
just blow us all away.
So anyway, long answer
to a short question.
But that's I think the
power of NGOs finding
ways to work together.
AUDIENCE: You touched on this in
your answer just now about
slavery in Nepal.
But I'm curious to hear how you
deal with cultural issues
whereby, particularly in terms
of women, where they are
discouraged from learning,
they are discouraged from
going to school, they're
discouraged from being
involved in public life, how
you partner, or how you
overcome some of those
challenges, particularly where
there is violence directed
against those who are trying
to buck this trend?
JOHN WOOD: Yeah.
I think the key thing for us
is that some of the heroic
employees at Room to Read
are local women.
Their titles are Social
Mobilizes.
And they're well-educated
Zambian women, Tanzanian
women, Nepalese women,
and Cambodian women.
And that's exactly
what they do.
They socially mobilize.
They go out, they kind of
agitate in the community.
They find out what are the
barriers to education?
But many times we've found the
barriers are not really
attitudinal.
Many times we've found the
barriers are actually
financial, which is great
because that's a really easy
problem to solve.
There's other barriers.
Our team in India was working in
a certain province where a
number of districts, they
couldn't find almost any girls
who had ever made it
past grade nine.
And they thought originally well
this might be some kind
of like cultural thing.
But it actually wasn't.
It was a Muslim community.
And the parents didn't feel
comfortable sending their
daughters to a school, the
high school, because they
didn't have any female
teachers.
And they didn't want their
daughters to be in a place
without female teachers.
Well again, that's an easy
problem to solve.
Our team went to the ministry of
education and said we need
to put female teachers
in these schools.
Because if we do, the girls
will stay in 9, 10,
11, and grade 12.
And within a year, over 500
girls in all these different
villages were now enrolled
in grades 9 and 10.
I tell a story in a book about,
just really quickly,
about Reema Shrestha, one
of our girls' education
[INAUDIBLE] officers in Nepal.
In 2008, we were on
a visit with her.
And I said Reema, what's good
about Room to Read in Nepal,
what's bad about Room
to Read in Nepal?
And she said John, I was
so excited in January.
I got our budget approved.
I was told that we could
add 500 girls to the
program this year.
She thought wow, 500
lives changed.
What a humongous number.
She was so excited.
And she went out, and through
our network of NGO partners,
to our government partners, and
said we have 500 positions.
She had 4,000 applications
within a month.
And she said John, do you know
it feels like to turn down
3,500 girls?
And I said, do you know what
it makes me feel like, it
makes me feel like a failure.
Because you should not be in the
business Reema of saying
no or even not yet.
You should be in the business
of saying yes.
And now, I end on that note
because I think that yes is a
beautiful word.
And I would like to invite all
of you-- really, I go back to
the thing I said earlier.
I don't want to be the leader
of an organization.
I want to be one of
many, many, many
leaders of a global movement.
And so I do hope that all of
you will get involved and
hopefully join us.
And if you want to hear a good
story about how we choose the
name Room to Read, I know we're
out of time, but grab
[? Paul Hare. ?]
because he hosted a dinner party
at which several bottles
of wine and several smart
friends came together.
And that's how we came
up with the brand.
If you've not read "Leaving
Microsoft to Change the
World," there actually a little
vignette called the
Name Game, which is all
about Paul and Susan
hosting this party.
And I was proposing we call the
organization Books Ahoy,
because we were like sending
books overseas.
And Paul convinced me that
the wrong [INAUDIBLE].
So again, thank you.
I know how busy you are,
so you being here.
SUSAN WOJCICKI: No,
thank you Paul.
[INAUDIBLE]
and Paul.
Thank you for coming.
