jim fruchterman: rocket scientist, social entrepreneur

Press

Quoted. New York Times Quotes Benetech CEO On Charitable Giving For A Financial and Social Return — November 12, 2007. The New York Times has quoted Benetech CEO Jim Fruchterman in a holiday Giving Section story on Silicon Valley entrepreneurs who are using their business acumen to transform their charitable giving to mission-oriented investing for both a financial and social return. The story, "With Sudden Wealth, the Desire for Sudden Impact" includes Fruchterman's observation that an increasing number of people are deploying capital in for-profit initiatives that have a social outcome.

"Within a 10-mile radius of Palo Alto, there are a couple of thousand families that could give $50 million to a social cause and fundamentally change some issue," Fruchterman said. "You could do a lot with $50 million, or even $10 million. You could cure a disease, or revolutionize services to an impoverished part of the world."

Article. Bookshare.org Award Covered in the San Jose Mercury News — October 19, 2007. The San Jose Mercury News has published a lively story about the U.S. Department of Education's $32 million five-year grant to Benetech's Bookshare.org project. The article gives well-deserved credit to Bookshare.org alpha volunteer Carrie Karnos and collection Development Manager Claire O'Brien who see to it that Bookshare.org members have access to the latest bestsellers and educational books. Bookshare.org remains the world's largest accessible collection of scanned books and periodicals for use by those with a qualifying print disability such as blindness, severe dyslexia or a mobility impairment. The story quotes Benetech CEO Jim Fruchterman who notes that thanks to the grant, Bookshare.org will likely be adding more than 500 books a week to its site, or more than 100,000 new volumes over the next five years.

Profile. Stanford Magazine Profiles Jim Fruchterman —July/August 2007. The Stanford Magazine has published a profile of Benetech CEO Jim Fruchterman entitled Geeks For Good. Fruchterman was a PhD student at Stanford and together with another Stanford student, built a reading machine for the blind that became the first of many social technology projects from Benetech. The article presents Benetech's Bookshare.org, Route 66 Literacy, Miradi, Martus and Human Rights Data Analysis Group projects which "harness Silicon Valley's engineering expertise for social benefit." It also talks about the landmine detector project, which was recently put on the back burner at Benetech because of political difficulties getting access to and exporting the needed technology. The article concludes with Jim's vision of giving back to society through technology delivering social benefits.

TV News Story. Benetech's Bookshare.org Service Profiled On CBS News — February 22, 2007. Benetech's Bookshare.org project was profiled in a feature story on the CBS Evening News today. Appearing as part of the CBS "American Spirit" series on innovations that scale to meet social needs, the program, entitled Tech Entrepreneur Helps Blind To Read, included Benetech CEO Jim Fruchterman, Bookshare.org Customer Service Manager John Glass, Bookshare.org volunteer Carrie Karnos and Bookshare.org members Brian Miller and Priscilla McKinley of Alexandria, Virginia. Miller was pictured listening to his daily newspaper via Bookshare.org enroute to work on the Washington D.C metro. CBS producers say they have received many calls in support of the program. Benetech congratulates all those who appeared in the broadcast and helped to make millions of CBS Evening News viewers more aware of the Bookshare.org community.

Interview. AccessWorld Interview — January, 2007. An interview with Benetech CEO Jim Fruchterman is featured in the January 2007 issue of AFB AccessWorld. Celebrating the Naming of a Genius: An Interview with Jim Fruchterman covers Fruchterman's 2006 MacArthur Fellowship and the expansion of Bookshare.org. Writer Deborah Kendrick also touches on Benetech's Route 66 Literacy service and Fruchterman's dream of of an inexpensive cell phone that delivers audio books and GPS coordinates. AFB AccessWorld: Technology and People Who Are Blind or Visually Impaired, is published by the American Foundation for the Blind.

Quoted. Network Philanthropy — January 21, 2007. Benetech CEO Jim Fruchterman is quoted in Network Philanthropy, a feature story that appeared this week in West, the Los Angeles Times magazine. The article, written by New American Foundation Fellow Douglas McGray, profiles the work of venture philanthropy pioneers Pierre Omidyar and Jeff Skoll. Benetech receives support from the innovative foundations launched by these two technology entrepreneurs, The Omidyar Network and the Skoll Foundation.

Profile. Benetech's Jim Fruchterman Profiled By IEEE Spectrum — December 2006
The IEEE Spectrum magazine has published an extensive profile of Benetech CEO Jim Fruchterman in its December issue. Together with an introduction by Senior Editor Tekla S. Perry, the story "Doing Well by Doing Good," offers a detailed history of Benetech, its current projects, and Jim's role in promoting social entrepreneurship in Silicon Valley. The IEEE Spectrum story quotes Chris Eyre, managing director of the Palo Alto venture capital firm Legacy Venture, who notes that 30 years from now, Benetech may be viewed in the same light as Fairchild Semiconductor which spun off many other companies and creative people who made their mark on the high tech community. "But why shouldn't Silicon Valley do for the social sector what it did for the private sector?" asks Eyre in the final sentence of the story. "Perhaps once again, one smart engineer with a little Palo Alto company will change the world."

Op. Ed. Jim Fruchterman Urges Silicon Valley To Address Global Concerns — November 13, 2006
Benetech Founder and CEO Jim Fruchterman published an OpEd in the San Jose Mercury News urging Silicon Valley entrepreneurs and technologists to apply their skills to solve pressing social problems. Fruchterman's essay, Build Great Companies, Then Help Build A Great World points to current projects launched by high-tech philanthropists and encourages social entrepreneurs to link up with like-minded people. Fruchterman will be speaking at the Silicon Valley Challenge Summit: Sharing Technological Innovation for Global Benefit at Santa Clara University on November 16. More information on the summit is available at www.scu.edu/sts/Events/rios/.

Extensive Coverage. MacArthur News Increases Local And National Press — October 12, 2006. Palo Alto, CA - Since Benetech CEO Jim Fruchterman was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship last month, both he and Benetech have been the focus of increasing media coverage. In addition to reports about the MacArthur winners in The New York Times and USA Today, profiles of Jim have appeared in San Francisco Chronicle and the San Jose Mercury News which published a news story on the three Bay Area MacArthur winners, a business section feature story and an exceptional column by Mike Cassidy entitled An Executive Does Well By Helping Others. Betsy Corcoran, a columnist at Forbes also wrote about Jim noting that he is "one of a handful of people at the forefront of starting not-for-profit technology companies." This month, the Social Enterprise Reporter published Jim's essay entitled High Tech Approaches for Building Social Enterprise. NewsForge has published an informative story about Benetech's use of free software.

Local TV. KPIX (CBS 5) Newscast — August 9, 2005. San Francisco-based television station presents a news story that highlights the work of Benetech’s Bookshare.org. Read KPIX broadcast transcript.

Article. San Francisco Chronicle — July 15, 2005. Article by Maura Thurman: Books ripped up, fed to online library for the blind. Focuses on Bookshare.org library containing more than 24,000 books. Read "Books ripped up..." article.