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:
Twitter: @davidrisherWR
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Risher
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
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