Photo by Cayce Clifford

David Risher (MBA 1991) was on a family trip to Ecuador in the spring of 2009, volunteering and touring a local orphanage in Guayaquil, when he noticed a padlock on a nearby building. He asked his tour guide what could possibly be inside that required such security. It turned out it was the local library—and no one was particularly keen on using it. The books, the guide informed Risher, came by boat, were often well out of date, and were of little interest to the children. So one day the building had been locked, and the key had since been long lost.

“I started reflecting on my own childhood, of going to the library and bringing home a stack of books,” recalls Risher. “We didn’t have a lot growing up but that was something we could do.” He wanted the children of Guayaquil to have the same opportunity.

Risher’s solution was Worldreader, an organization he cofounded in 2010 that uses technology to deliver books to children all over the world. “I always think life is this combination of romance and practicality,” he explains. “And the romance was, maybe we can do something really big and really affirming and life-changing for millions and millions of kids. And then the practicality was, what do we know something about?”

The former executive at Amazon and Microsoft knew plenty about tech and business. Risher’s abundant experience and knowledge helped him build out the foundational Worldreader app. He also had connections, such as Steve Kessel, longtime head of Kindle, who heard Risher’s story of the abandoned library in Guayaquil and donated 20 Kindles for the launch of Worldreader.

After a beta test at an international school in Barcelona, where Risher was living at the time, he and cofounder Colin McElwee packed their 20 Kindles into suitcases and made their way to a school in Ghana. There, they handed those Kindles, loaded with books, to a group of sixth graders and their teachers. “We had to provide infrastructure and scaffolding and instruction, and we had to physically move things around and load books on all these things,” Risher allows, “but the fundamental demand was super clear.”

Within months, Worldreader’s app launched, offering access to thousands of books from around the world, allowing students not only to read for pleasure but also to explore categories like human health and career development, as well as to improve their reading, language, and comprehension skills. The data the organization collects—e.g., what’s interesting to young readers and how they access such books—is then shared with its partner organizations and publishers, to tap into and strengthen new global markets of readers.

Worldreader was quickly a success story in the global south, amassing more than 2 million users in just five years. Global figures continued to climb, but in the spring of 2020, when schools across the United States were closed due to the pandemic, the organization turned its attention homeward. “We have this incredible disparity right here in the United States,” observes Risher. “Worldreader has created these tools. Now we wanted to see if we could deploy them in the United States.” By the end of 2020, Worldreader had signed up two big partners—World Vision and Raising a Reader—to develop their BookSmart app, which is designed to help primary school readers develop learning concepts and reading skills, and offers books in many languages, including Arabic, English, Hindi, and Spanish.

They also built a diverse domestic advisory board that includes, among others, Sandra Cisneros, author of The House on Mango Street; Mary Pope Osborne, who wrote the Magic Tree House series; Dennis Scott, former NBA player and reading advocate; Andy Jassy (MBA 1997), CEO of Amazon; Roy Swan, head of impact investing at Ford; and Carrie Rathod, who leads brand innovation at Proctor & Gamble. “It’s been a really interesting effort in the United States, because we’ve brought all of the tools we’ve built to connect with underserved communities around the globe to populations right here, in our own backyard,” notes Risher.

Thus far, Worldreader has reached 19 million readers in 48 countries, and its users have engaged with nearly 68 million books. Those books come from all over the world, so students anywhere can read about children who look like them, speak their language, and live within their cultural milieu. Worldreader also has a large bilingual collection in use within the United States.

Risher tells the story of a 12-year-old Mexican boy living in Texas who loses himself in Worldreader books every day, often reading both the English and Spanish versions of books on his phone: “I read the English to practice,” the boy told his instructor, “and I read the Spanish books to feel at home.”

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