We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful John Wood. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with John below.
Hi John , really happy you were able to join us today and we’re looking forward to sharing your story and insights with our readers. Let’s start with the heart of it all – purpose. How did you find your purpose?
I did not find my purpose – it found me. It started with 10 simple words – “Perhaps, Sir, you will some day come back with books”. This was the direct but humble request from the headmaster of a rural school in the Annapurna Mountain range of Nepal whom I met during an 18 day trek. I was a burned out Microsoft exec at the time and was in Nepal for a break. I joked that if you went high enough into the Himalayas, you could escape the sound of Steve Ballmer yelling at you. Anyway, this headmaster had over 300 students but their library was empty. He explained that “In Nepal, we are too poor to afford education, but without education we will always remain poor.”
Having grown up a middle-class small town boy whose favorite hobby was reading books from our local library, this felt like a time for karmic payback. One year later, I went back to the village of Bahundanda with over 3,000 children’s books on the backs of six rented donkeys with my 73-year old father alongside me. This was amongst the best father-son experiences we’d ever had. Several other local headmasters had heard we were coming to town, and showed up with formal letters to “petition” us to also help their schools. It struck me that something that was relatively easy for us to do meant so much to these communities. The idea for Room to Read was born at that moment, and within two months I quit Microsoft to embark on a bold new adventure to open dozens, then hundreds, then thousands of school libraries in low-income countries.
Appreciate the insights and wisdom. Before we dig deeper and ask you about the skills that matter and more, maybe you can tell our readers about yourself?
After more than twenty years devoted to growing Room to Read to one of the most impactful education NGO’s in the world, it was time for a new challenge. So many of the young people we had helped over the years were now graduating from secondary school and desired to move on to university. Lack of family funding was thwarting those dreams of becoming a doctor, nurse, teacher or engineer, so we set up U-GO as a “side project” and thought we’d help a few dozen young women go to university. We were then inundated with hundreds and later thousands of applications and realized it was time to formalize the program and launch U-GO as an independent organization as what I call my “logical next step”.
Why is it special? It only takes $800 to fund a U-GO scholar for one year – that’s how much further funding will go in a low-income country like Cambodia, Indonesia or the Philippines. You don’t have to be a zillionaire in order to make an impact – anyone can experience the joy of changing lives. And through our “zero leakage model”, we guarantee that 100% of every donation goes directly to the scholarship program, as our C-suite works for no salary and our global Board covers every dollar of administrative and fund-raising expenses.
What makes it exciting? Well, in just over three years, we have awarded long-term scholarships to over 4,300 ambitious and promising young women, and that number will increase to over 6,700 with the start of the 2025-6 academic year. Even though we’re a start up, we fund more scholarships per year than Jeff Bezos, Michael Dell, Bill Gates, Phil Knight and Steven Schwarzman combined!
What’s a great and fun visual? Imagine lining up 52 Boeing 737 jets and filling every single seat. That’s the number of women whose lives are being changed through U-GO scholarships?
Looking back, what do you think were the three qualities, skills, or areas of knowledge that were most impactful in your journey? What advice do you have for folks who are early in their journey in terms of how they can best develop or improve on these?
–First, I am a team builder. I spend most of my team recruiting awesome people to be part of our movement. Through public speaking, media interviews and hundreds of meals and drinks, I’ve successfully pitched thousands of people to turn “my quest” into “our quest”.
–Second, our teams focus relentlessly on results. The charity world has too much “happy talk” and people spend too much time patting themselves on the back. Our teams set bold goals, and once we hit them we celebrate – then set a bolder goal and return to the hard work of getting it done.
–Third and final, I work hard and try to avoid distractions from my mission. I don’t watch TV, I’m on social media for no more than an hour a week and since I love what I do I’m not averse to putting in long hours.
My advice to young people would be simple. Stay humble and stay hungry. Do only a few things, but do them with focused tenacity. Recognize that to achieve greatness takes not just time – there are no overnight successes and most great companies took decades to build. Surround yourself with awesome people, learn from each other and don’t forget to have fun. Finally, look out for others who did not get the same number of lucky breaks in life that many of us did.
Is there a particular challenge you are currently facing?
Many of the original team members involved from the earliest years of Room to Read are now united behind U-GO. Because of this blessing, we have been able to build off two decades of trust and shared experience in order to scale quickly. We’ve collectively set a BHAG (Big Hairy Audacious Goal) of awarding long-term scholarships to 10,001 young women by our 5 year anniversary in February 2027. It won’t be easy and will require hard work, constant travel and coordination across hundreds of geographies. But we have to do this, because whether the young woman is an Afghan refugee in Pakistan or the child of a single mother in the Mekong Delta, she should not be on our waiting list – she should be in the university classroom making her way towards a brighter future where she can not only earn money, but also use it to take care of her family and community.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.ugouniversity.org
- Instagram: ugouniversity
- Linkedin: ugouniversity
- Youtube: ugouniversity
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