Cliff Schmidt - Developer to CEO of Tech Nonprofit in Education (#24)

Develomentor

Welcome to another episode of Develomentor. Today's guest is Cliff Schmidt.
Cliff founded tech nonprofit Amplio (formerly named Literacy Bridge) in 2007 to address global poverty and disease by making practical agriculture and health knowledge accessible to those who need it most. He led the development of an audio-based mobile device called the “Talking Book” for people with minimal literacy skills living in rural areas without electricity or Internet access. Cliff received the Microsoft alumni Integral Fellow Award presented by Bill and Melinda Gates twice (in 2010 and 2014) and was selected as a member of the Clinton Global Initiative by President Bill Clinton. He received the top prize at the Tech Awards in 2012 and Computerworld Honors in 2013 and was featured by the PBS Newshour as one of five Agents for Social Change in 2013.

Prior to starting Amplio, Cliff was a software developer for Microsoft and a nuclear engineering officer for the U.S. Navy Submarine Force. Cliff holds a B.S. in cognitive science from MIT and an M.S. in computer science and engineering from the University of Washington. Cliff loves music and playing tenor saxophone.

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Episode Summary

"We're not huge in Seattle. We're only seven people, and in Ghana, we're about 15 or so. But we do reach nearly seven hundred thousand people with these talking books"
---Cliff Schmidt

Cliff Schmidt is a former submarine officer in the Navy with a background in cognitive science as well as computer science. He's now the CEO of the nonprofit, Amplio, focused on transforming lives through knowledge. If that isn't enough, he’s also been a long-time contributor to open source. Cliff has won numerous awards, including two from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation as well as one from the Clinton Global Initiative.

Cliff started his career as a developer at Microsoft. As much as he loved coding, Cliff started getting pulled into more product and project management roles. Looking back at it, Cliff reflects he got "pulled towards the bigger picture ideas but it doesn't mean it's any less fun to write code."

While traveling, Cliff decided to be a tourist in Atlanta for a day when he came across a statue of Gandhi and the grave of Martin Luther King Jr. Suddenly it became clear to him that he wasn't making the impact he was capable of making. Right there and then, Cliff decided he was going to dedicate his life to "service humanity in some form." This was the beginning of Amplio.

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