Room to Read | John Wood & Don Valentine | Talks at Google

John Wood discovered his passion, his greatest success, and his life's work--not at business school or leading Microsoft's charge into Asia in the 1990s--but on a soul-searching trip to the Himalayas. Wood felt trapped between an all-consuming career and a desire to do something lasting and significant. Stressed from the demands of his job, he took a vacation trekking in Nepal because a friend had told him, "If you get high enough in the mountains, you can't hear Steve Ballmer yelling at you anymore." Later, Wood made the decision to walk away from Microsoft and create Room to Read, a nonprofit that has touched the lives of 875,000 children with the lifelong gift of education. After earning an MBA at the Kellogg School of Management, John Wood worked for several years in banking before joining Microsoft in 1991. Don Valentine founded Sequoia Capital and was one of the original investors in Apple, Oracle, Cisco, Electronic Arts, Google, and YouTube. This event took place October 2, 2007 at Google Headquarters in Mountain View, CA.