His Bottom Line: Educating the World’s Kids. At Microsoft, John Wood Wasn’t Interested in Money. All He Wanted Was Change.

How to put this gently? John Wood is making the rest of us look bad.

Oh, he doesn’t mean to. The founder and CEO of a San Francisco-based nonprofit organization called Room to Read http://roomtoread.org/ , who’s just published a book called "Leaving Microsoft to Change the World," doesn’t blame us for not quitting our nice, secure jobs pushing paper or marketing digital widgets, as he did seven years ago at age 35, and throwing ourselves into planet-enhancing philanthropy.

He knows that few people have the ability or the desire to drop everything else in life for a chosen cause — in Wood’s case, sending millions of books to village children in places such as Nepal, Sri Lanka and Vietnam; building thousands of libraries and hundreds of schools; and funding more than 2,000 long-term scholarships for education-deprived girls.

But Wood also knows that some of us wish we could. He’s living our fantasy life. Which can be a wonderful fundraising tool.

By Bob Thompson
Washington Post Staff Writer

Full Story: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/08/AR2006090801938.html