What if you decided what you were doing with your life – your career, your training, your aspirations up the corporate ladder – wasn’t what you wanted to do with the rest of your life? What would you be willing to do about it?
John Wood in his book, “Leaving Microsoft to Change the World: An Entrepreneur’s Odyssey to Educate the World’s Children” recounts his journey to finding his life’s mission and how it changed in an unexpected way.
Wood was a successful executive with Microsoft, living in Sydney, Australia and then Beijing, China, working 60-hour weeks, making great money and cruising along with a girlfriend and a strong work ethic.
On his holidays he would backpack and hike through the mountains of Nepal. On one such trip, he came upon a small village and began asking questions of the citizens through his hiking companion and interpreter … and the rest was history.
While there, he asked about the town library; there was none. He asked about books for the school-aged children to read; there were none. Having been raised on reading himself, encouraged by a mother and older sister to devour books, Wood found it amazing books could be so absent in any setting, even a remote and mountainous Nepalese village.
And as he asked himself what could be done for this village, and a nonprofit ministry was born: Room to Read. Excited about the prospect of bringing books to this village, Wood went back to his home in the States and gathered books from various sources, discovered a way to ship them inexpensively, and encouraged his father to help him in this project.
The satisfaction he felt was immense, so great that after a few years of supervising this ministry, he began to wonder what it would be like to quit his job at Microsoft, get off the success and career ladder, and work full time for Room to Read.
And this is exactly what he eventually did, much to the chagrin of his girlfriend, herself on the corporate ladder to the corner office, who didn’t understand nor want to stay around to do so. Which left John Wood managing an ever-growing, rapidly expanding nonprofit that began to move into various other countries: Vietnam, Cambodia, Honduras.
Wherever there were young people who did not have the benefits of reading, Room to Read would set up a presence. Libraries were built, using local labor so the citizens of the town or village would feel invested in the project and could call it their own.
This book is a testimony to the power of reading and education to change lives. Often Wood and his staff would get reports of students who had participated in the Room to Read program and then go on to higher education and secure jobs in their cities and countries. Never once did John Wood look back to regret his decision to leave Microsoft and pursue this course in his life.
The book is an encouragement to us all to find a dream outside of ourselves and to make it happen. There is no greater reward than to invest one’s life in helping others, and John Wood’s book is a testament to the fact.