Media Kit

Jim Fruchterman, CEO, Tech Matters

Technologist for Good and Serial Entrepreneur

Jim Fruchterman is a leading social entrepreneur, a MacArthur Fellow, a recipient of the Skoll Award, and a Distinguished Alumnus of Caltech. His life’s work is applying technology to benefit the 90% of humanity typically neglected by for-profit tech companies, by building the tech and data for good movements and launching nonprofit open source software enterprises.

Jim’s career started with a private enterprise rocket company. Although the rocket blew up on the launch pad, this experience launched his entrepreneurial career in Silicon Valley, where he co-founded two successful machine learning/artificial intelligence companies.

Jim’s first social good product was a machine that recognized letters and words and read those words aloud to people who are blind. He founded Benetech, a pioneering nonprofit technology company, to empower people with disabilities to read independently. He continued by creating Bookshare, which is now the largest library in the world for people who are blind or dyslexic. Jim was on the original drafting team for the Treaty of Marrakesh, the first pro-consumer intellectual property treaty passed by the United Nations.

In 2018, Jim founded Tech Matters, as a tech for good nonprofit. Tech Matters builds the technology for social good movement, helping social change leaders use tech to achieve impact at scale. Tech Matters has built Aselo, a shared modern contact center for crisis response helplines, Terraso, software for smallholders and locally-led sustainability initiatives responding to climate change, and the Better Deal for Data, a data governance movement.

Through his work as a trailblazer in the field of social entrepreneurship, Jim continues today advancing his vision of a world in which the benefits of technology reach all of humanity, not just the wealthiest and most able ten percent.

Jim Fruchterman, CEO, Tech Matters

Technologist for Good and Social Entrepreneur

Jim Fruchterman is a leading social entrepreneur, a MacArthur Fellow, a recipient of the Skoll Award, and a Distinguished Alumnus of Caltech.

After starting two successful for-profit AI companies, he went on to found Benetech, the award-winning tech nonprofit. He has built tools that help people with disabilities read independently, and human rights groups document and analyze abuses.

His current nonprofit efforts at Tech Matters include Aselo, a shared modern contact center for the crisis response field; Terraso, software for locally-led sustainability initiatives responding to climate change; and the Better Deal for Data for responsible data governance.

Jim Fruchterman, CEO, Tech Matters

Technologist for Good and Social Entrepreneur

Jim Fruchterman is a leading social entrepreneur, a MacArthur Fellow, a recipient of the Skoll Award for Social Entrepreneurship, and a Distinguished Alumnus of Caltech. He founded Benetech, an award-winning Silicon Valley tech nonprofit.

His nonprofit projects at Tech Matters include Aselo, a shared modern contact center for the crisis response field; Terraso, software for locally-led sustainability initiatives responding to climate change; and the Better Deal for Data for responsible data governance.

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