The Starbucks of Libraries

John Wood was a Microsoft millionaire on a rare vacation when he came across an empty library in a poor village in Nepal. Within a year, he’d quit hi-tech to start building libraries and schools in poor countries around the world. He’s arguing for a new kind of philanthropy, one that takes accountability and scale from business practices. As he likes to point out, his charity, “Room to Read,” has opened more libraries than Starbucks has opened coffee shops.