"Reading the Word..."

David Risher is the CEO and co-founder of Worldreader. After a
career as a general manager at Microsoft and an early stage
executive at Amazon, David recognized early on how e-readers and
digital books could give kids in under-served parts of the world
better access to the life-changing experience of reading. Since
co-founding Worldreader in 2010, David and the Worldreader team
have expanded the organization to have impact in more than 46
countries, delivering high-quality books in 52 languages to over
19 million children. Together, they’ve demonstrated how digital
technology–combined with high-quality books, smart programming,
strong partnerships–can accelerate reading around the globe and
unlock the potential of the world’s next scientists, teachers,
innovators, and explorers.


David has degrees from Princeton University and Harvard Business
School is a Schwab Foundation Social Entrepreneur of the Year
Awardee, a Draper Richards Kaplan social entrepreneur, an invited
member of the Clinton Global Initiative, and a Microsoft Alumni
Foundation Integral Fellow. He has two daughters and lives in San
Francisco, California, with his wife– author Jennifer Risher.


In my conversation today I'm chatting with David Risher, a guy
who helped grow Amazon from a 15 million dollar company to what
it is today, and founder of the non-profit, Worldreader who as a
team have opened those new doors through reading that i mentioned
to more than 19 million kids globally. Since we talked I've been
thinking about what a privilege it is - reading, I mean. I've
been reading authors and genres that are pretty new to me lately
but it all started with access and David and I talk about how, in
spite of the digital age, accessing books is still an issue.
According to UNESCO, in 2021 over 100 million kids and 700
million adults are non-literate.


Links from this episode:


Read David’s full bio here.


Twitter: @davidrisherWR


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Risher


https://www.worldreader.org/


https://en.unesco.org/sites/default/files/ild-2021-fact-sheet.pdf


UNESCO, International Literacy Day 2021 - Literacy for a human
centred recovery: Narrowing the


digital divide
https://en.unesco.org/sites/default/files/ild-2021-fact-sheet.pdf


Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.