GLO is the brainchild of Nelson Saba, a Brazilian evangelical Christian who was once, before his conversion, a technology vice president at Citibank. Three years ago, he joined forces with Phil Chen, a Taiwanese businessman whose family has an interest in the publicly traded company HTC, manufactures handheld wireless devices designed to compete with the iPhone.
Chen, 31, comes from generations of devout Christians and is a Christian minister himself, trained and ordained at Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, Calif. He was in Afghanistan building schools and orphanages for poor kids when he started thinking about the ways in which he could use technology for a good cause. “If I give this,” he told me, gesturing at his cell phone, “to a child, I’m not giving him a book. I’m giving him a library, a university, a future.”
HT: Newsweek