Masters in Business · Wednesday, July 8, 2026
After his impactful tenure at Amazon, David Risher transitioned to running Worldreader, a non-profit focused on improving literacy through technology. He described this period as fulfilling a desire to teach and connect reading with technology, helping millions of children globally. The shift back to the corporate sector came when he joined Lyft's board, driven by a desire to advocate for customers and leverage his experience in scaling companies.
“The thesis of the company was kids are going to read using tech, and that's how it's gotten to be, you know, millions and millions of kids later are all reading on the platform.”
“So boards, you know, for those of you who haven't gotten a chance to be exposed to a board, you know, they typically are made up by you know, kind of finance people, you know, business strategists, you know, maybe you know, maybe people who have built companies before. But often by the time you get to sort of the board level of a company, you're pretty far away from the customer.”
“And John and though and again to their credit, said you know what, we need some more customer advocacy right from the top. We need some more support frankly for that kind of vibe as well as someone who'd helped scale a company like Amazon.”