David Risher

John David Risher (born July 15, 1965) is an American businessman and philanthropist. He is the President and co-founder of Worldreader, a non-profit organization that aims to bring digital books to the developing world through mobile phones and e-readers.

Risher served as an executive at Microsoft Corporation, and was Senior Vice President of US Retail at Amazon.com from 1997 to 2002. In November 2009, together with Colin McElwee, he founded Worldreader.

Risher grew up in his mother's house in Chevy Chase, Maryland.

In 1987 he graduated from Princeton University, where he majored in Comparative Literature and wrote his thesis on “The Changing Attitudes towards Language in Samuel Beckett’s early Metafiction.”

After graduating from college, he worked at L.E.K. Consulting, and then bicycled across the United States before entering Harvard Business School, graduating in 1991.

At Microsoft, Risher was General Manager in charge of launching the company’s first database product, Access. He went on to found and manage Microsoft Investor. In 1997, he left Microsoft to join Amazon.com as Vice President of Product and Store development. He later served as the company’s Senior Vice President, US Retail, overseeing the marketing and general management of Amazon’s retail operations.

After leaving Amazon in 2002, Risher taught at the University of Washington’s Foster Business School, where he created the University’s course on “Competing on the Internet.” He was elected Professor of the Year in 2004.

Risher founded Worldreader after a year-long trip around the world with his family, home-schooling his daughters and volunteering at a school in China. After visiting an orphanage in Ecuador, Risher saw how e-reader technology could give kids in remote and under-served parts of the world access to books.

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