Lisa Friendly

Personal Biography:

I run the Bookshare.org program at Benetech, a non-profit organization in Palo Alto, California founded and led by Jim Fruchterman. Bookshare.org is the world’s largest digital library for the print disabled with 35,000 volumes and 125 newspapers and magazines. The library serves those who are blind, or have very low vision, dyslexia or a mobility impairment which makes it impossible for them to read printed books. The books can be read as large print, text to speech, refreshable Braille or hardcopy Braille. In addition, Benetech has just been awarded a large federal grant to provide textbooks in these formats to all students in K-12, college and graduate school. All books in the Bookshare.org collection will be provided to these students at no cost to them or their schools.

In addition, I am on the executive team at Benetech as Director of Operations. The work that I do allows me to combine the strong background that I have in software technology management with my desire to use those skills to provide the solution to a very tangible need in an underserved population. The work is extremely interesting and the results very immediate for our user population. I love working with our subscribers and volunteers, as well as with the engineers, the operational staff and the management team to make it all hum, so this is the perfect job for me.

Before joining Benetech in September of 2006 I was director of Software Technical Publications at Macromedia and at Sun Microsystems. I was an original member of the Java team at Sun and remained with the project for 12 years.

On a personal note, I live in beautiful Northern California near Palo Alto. I attended Washington University in St. Louis for my BA and Adelphi University in New York for my Ph.D., both in psychology. I have two terrific sons, who are both in college. One is studying advertising at the University of Colorado and the other political science at the University of Southern California.

Goals:

Goals for the Fellowship

By being a fellow in the ZeroDivide program, I will have a chance to learn from the other fellows about how to succeed at running a technology program with social benefits for its users. We will share a passion for our work and a common understanding of what it takes to achieve success for our clients. Many of them will have more experience with successful outreach to the target community than I do and I expect to learn a great deal from them. At the same time, I hope to be able to contribute to the overall goals of the Community Technology Foundation through my two years as a fellow and to emerge as a force for change in supporting underserved populations with technology and heart.