Resume & Biography

Resume/Biography for Jim Fruchterman

President & CEO, The Benetech Initiative

Education

• California Institute of Technology
  B.S. Engineering, 1976-80
  M.S. Applied Physics, 1978-80
• Stanford University, 1980-81
  Electrical Engineering
  Ph.D. Studies

Professional Experience

• President, CEO, Chairman, Founder, 2000-present
  The Benetech Initiative
  Palo Alto, California
• President, CEO, Chairman, Founder, 1989-2000
  Arkenstone, Inc.
  Moffett Field, California
• Director, Vice President Finance, CFO, 1989-present
  President & CEO, Founder, 1989-95
  RAF Technology, Inc.
  Palo Alto, California and Redmond, Washington
• Vice President, Marketing, 1987-89
  Founder, Vice President, Finance, 1982-88
  Calera Recognition Systems, Inc.
  Santa Clara, California

Prior engineering positions with:

• Phoenix Engineering, Inc.
• G.C.H., Inc.
• IBM T.J. Watson Research Center
• General Motors Company
• NASA — Jet Propulsion Laboratory
• Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory

Selected Publications

• Accessing Books and Documents, a chapter in the forthcoming book, Assistive Technology for Vision-Impaired and Blind People, to be published by Springer Verlag in 2007
• Everyone Deserves Access to Technology, OpEd in The Sacramento Bee by Jim Fruchterman and Gregg Vanderheiden, June 17, 2007
• Nothing Ventured Nothing Gained, Addressing the Critical Gaps in Risk-Taking Capital for Social Enterprise, by Jed Emerson, Tim Freundlich and Jim Fruchterman, published by Oxford Said Business School, 2006
• Build Great Companies, Then Help Build a Great World, OpEd in The San Jose Mercury News, November 13, 2006
• Comments on Accessibility of Google Print and Google’s Library Project, white paper, February 2005
• Technology Benefiting Humanity, published in the Association for Computing Machines Ubiquity magazine, March 2004
• The Power of Technology Social Enterprises, published in the N-TEN forecast series, February 2004
• In the Palm of Your Hand: A Vision of the Future of Technology for People with Visual Impairments, published in the American Foundation for the Blind’s Journal of Vision Impairment and Blindness, October 2003.
• The Chafee Amendment: Improving Access to Information, published in Information Technology and Disabilities, a journal published by Equal Access to Software and Information (EASI), co-authored with Bookshare.org Senior Product Manager Alison Lingane, October 2003.
• The Soundproof Book: Exploration of Rights Conflict and Access to Commercial EBooks for People with Disabilities, published in First Monday, co-authored with George Kerscher, the International Project Manager of the DAISY Consortium, May 2002
• Bookshare.org, Books without Barriers, at the Closing the Gap conference, Minneapolis, MN, October 2001
• Two presentations given at the IT Accessibility 2001 Conference, May 2001 at the National Institute of Standards and Technology
  • I Dream of Software
  • The Business Case for Adaptive Technology
• Humanizing the Voice of the Machine, with Prof. Mari Ostendorf (University of Washington), Annual Meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of the Machine, Boston, MA, February 2000
• The Many Facets of Open Book: Ruby Edition, California State University, Northridge (CSUN), 15th Technology and Persons with Disabilities Conference, March 2000
• Corporate Responsibility for Adaptive Technology, California State University, Northridge (CSUN), 14th Technology and Persons with Disabilities Conference, March 1999
• Developing Partnerships for Assistive and Universally Designed Technology for Persons with Disabilities, Testimony before United States House of Representatives, Committee on Science, Subcommittee on Technology, August 4, 1998
• Access to Maps and Location Information through Virtual Reality Techniques and GPS Satellite Receivers, 3rd International Technical Aids Seminar, Tokyo, Japan, July 1994

Invited Talks

• Extensive speaking engagements to students about technology serving people with disabilities. In the last two years, invited talks at:
  • Stanford University
  • University of California at Berkeley
  • University of the Pacific
  • Santa Clara University
  • San Jose State
  • University of California at Santa Cruz
  • University of California at Davis
  • Loyola Marymount University
  • Pepperdine University
  • University of Washington
  • Columbia University
  • Harvard University
  • University of Geneva
  • Oxford University
• Inflection Point Opportunities in Social Investment, Closing Keynote for the UBS Philanthropy Forum, Lisbon, Portugal, July 2007
• It’s Not Rocket Science: Building Social Enterprises, Keynote for the 7th Gathering of the Social Enterprise Alliance, Atlanta, Georgia , March 2006
• Opening Keynote for the Global Social Venture Competition, New York, April, 2006
• Keynote for the 7th IAPR Workshop on Document Analysis Systems, Nelson, New Zealand , February 2006
• Building a Global Library for People with Print Disabilities, a speech for the World Summit on the Information Society, Tunis, Tunisia, November 2005
• Innovating Information Technologies to Protect Human Rights, a speech for the World Affairs Council of Northern California, February 2004
• Setting the 2004 Agenda: Technology, speaker at the World Economic Forum, Davos, Switzerland , January 2004
• Seizing Market Failure as an Investment Opportunity, Keynote for the Business for Social Responsibility Annual Conference, Los Angeles, November 2003.
• In the Palm of Your Hand, Keynote for the World Blind Union Asia Pacific conference, Singapore , November, 2003
• Technology and Human Rights, University of Peradeniya, Sri Lanka , November, 2003
• When Markets Fail, Who Responds? Discussion Leader at the World Economic Forum, Davos, Switzerland , January 2003
• Technology for Nonprofits, with Michael Gilbert, National Gathering for Social Entrepreneurs, Minneapolis, MN, December, 2002
• Benetech Bookshare.org Program C-4 James R. Fruchterman Biographies for CDFA: 84.327K
• Bookshare.org: Large Scale, Web-Based Accessible Books, TechShare conference organized by the Royal National Institute of the Blind, Birmingham, UK, November 2002
• Putting Technology to Work for Development, speech at the United Nations to the joint meeting of the World Technology Network and UNOPS, July 2002
  • Listen to audio of speech (MP3 Format)
  • Read the text of speech (Microsoft Word Format)
• Bookshare.org: The Project for Creating Accessible Books through Computers, at the General Session of the National Federation of the Blind 2002 Annual Convention, July 2002
• Stanford Social Entrepreneurship Conference, January 2002
• The Once and Future Web: Tenth Anniversary of the First U.S. Web Page at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Laboratory, December 2001
• NetImpact Annual Conference at Kenan-Flagler Business School, November 2001
• American Council of the Blind Annual Convention, July 2001
• Guest lectures at Haas Business School, Seattle Pacific University
• Bringing Socially Beneficial Technology into the Service of Humanity, EE380 at Stanford University, April 2001
• Information Technology in the Service of Human Rights at the Computers, Freedom and Privacy Conference, March 2001
• International Technical Aids Seminar, Tokyo, Japan
• Rank Prize Fund Symposium, Grasmere, England
• Guest Lecturer for CSUN program in disability leadership

Professional Associations

• Association for Computing Machinery
• Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers
• American Institute of Aeronautics & Astronautics
• American Association for the Advancement of Science

Awards and Public Service

• Strache Leadership Award from the California State University, Northridge, 2007
• John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Fellowship, 2006
• Technical Advisory Committee Member, National Instructional Materials Accessibility Standard, U.S. Department of Education (2005-present)
• Advisory Committee Member, National Instructional Materials Accessibility Center, U.S. Department of Education (2006-present)
• Skoll Award for Social Entrepreneurship, 2004 and 2006
• Fast Company Social Capitalist Award: Top 20 Groups Changing the World, 2004
• Laureate, The 2003 and 2001 Tech Museum Awards
• American Library Association Francis Joseph Campbell Award 2003
• Schwab Foundation Outstanding Social Entrepreneur of 2003 Award
• Member, the Community Partnership Committee, which oversees a diversity and disability agreement with SBC, Inc.
• Runner-up, Yale-Goldman Sachs National Nonprofit Business Plan Competition, 2003
• American Foundation for the Blind Access Award, 2003
• Robert S. Bray Award, The American Council of the Blind
• Winner, Education Category, 2002 Stockholm Challenge
• Fast 50 Champion of Innovation 2002
• Judge, 2002 National Social Venture Competition
• Member, Board of Directors of the Social Entreprise Alliance (2000-present)
• Member of the Advisory Board, Telecommunications Access Rehabilitation Engineering Research Center, a joint effort of the Trace R&D Center of the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the Technology Access Program of Gallaudet University, 2001-present
• Panelist, National Science Foundation Small Business Innovation Research Program, 1998, 2000, 2003
• Participant, 1998 NSF Workshop for Discussing Research Priorities and Evaluation Strategies in Speech Synthesis, August, 1998
• Member, Electronic Information and Technology Access Advisory Committee, a federal advisory committee responsible for drafting federal acquisition standards for accessibility under Section 508, 1998-1999
• Member, Telecommunications Access Advisory Committee, a federal advisory committee responsible for making recommendations to the U.S. Access Board and Federal Communications Commission on implementing portions of the 1996 Telecommunications Act, 1996-1997
• U.S. Patent Number 5,470,223: System and Method for Tracking a Pedestrian
• Finalist, 1996 Discover Magazine Awards for Technological Innovation
• 1996 Access Award, American Foundation for the Blind

Major Works and Areas of Expertise

• Founder and CEO of Benetech, a highly innovative nonprofit company focused on using the power of technology to address social needs in areas such as disability, human rights, literacy, education, the environment, the digital divide, employment of the disadvantaged, and the prevention of suffering.
• Founder of Arkenstone, Inc., a leading nonprofit organization providing adaptive technology for education and employment for people with disabilities and the largest maker of reading systems for people with blindness, vision impairment and learning disabilities. Developer of the Arkenstone Reader, the first affordable reading system for the blind. Designer of Open Book, the first talking Windows program for the blind. Co-inventor of Atlas Speaks, the first accessible map software for the blind, and of Strider, a talking GPS locator for the blind.
• Founder of RAF Technology, Inc., the nation's leading company in optical character recognition technology for processing forms in postal and medical applications. RAF's software is used to route the United States mail.
• Cofounder of Calera Recognition Systems, Inc., the first company to develop omnifont optical character recognition that works without user training.

© 2008, Jim Fruchterman. All rights reserved. Email Jim Fruchterman.