Profile: Melinda Gates

Melinda Gates is the third most powerful woman in the world. On top of being one of the most powerful women, she is also one of the most wealthy, boasting an estimated shared wealth of nearly $90 billion with her husband, Bill Gates. Possessing this wealth has given her a need to give back, becoming one of the world’s most prolific philanthropists as co-chair of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which she helmed virtually on her own for the first six years of the operation. In addition to her and her husband’s education and healthcare initiatives’ Gates also takes a personal interest in women’s issues around the world. In this profile, we will be taking a look at who Melinda was before Bill Gates and Microsoft, a woman who studied computer science far ahead of her time. What made Melinda, Melinda. The intelligent, diligent, and hardworking woman who any young girl would and still does aspire to be before she became branded ‘Bill Gates Wife’ and what is she doing to better the world?

When you think of the name Melinda Gates chances are the first things that come to your mind are Microsoft and Bill Gates. However, her name and association with these two things should not deter from the highly educated and impressive person that Melinda Gates is without these ties. In referring to her as such we wash over her many astounding accomplishments, so for the remainder of this profile, I will be referring to her as Melinda Ann French, her birth name. Melinda Ann French was born one of four children in Dallas, Texas. Melinda’s father, Ray French, was an aerospace engineer on the Apollo-programming team. This is why at a young age technology was a big part of Melinda’s life, she remembers watching a countless number of rocket launches. Mesmerized by the ‘moment of lift’ just before the spacecraft took off. This is what first piqued her interest in tech. Her mother, Elaine French, was a stay-at-home mom. Elaine always regretted not attending college so she placed a strong emphasis on her children’s higher education. To that end, her father started a side business selling rental properties as a means of earning their children’s tuition. At an early age, Melinda developed an interest in computers while taking an advanced math class at Ursuline Academy, a Catholic school for girls. Melinda was valedictorian and head of the drill team at Ursuline, going on to donate $7 million to the school for the construction of a science, math, and technology center. She went on to further pursue her interest in computers in college, earning a bachelor’s degree in computer science from Duke University in 1986. The following year she obtained a master’s in business administration, with a focus in economics, from Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business. From there Melinda went on to accept a job at Microsoft Corporation in 1987, however, Melinda wasn’t planning on working at Microsoft. When Melinda finished her MBA she was offered a job at IBM. Having worked there for several summers she thought it only natural to begin her career there. An IBM hiring manager ultimately steered her away however, “I told the recruiter that I had one more interview - at this young company, Microsoft,” Melinda said in an interview with Fortune magazine. “She said to me, ‘If you get a job offer from them, take it because the chance for advancement there is terrific.’” After talking with the recruiter, Melinda took the product managing position at Microsoft, where she primarily developed multimedia and interactive products. Which is when Melinda met her husband, and then boss, Bill Gates. Over the course of her nine years working for Microsoft, Melinda worked her way up to general manager of information products. The products she worked on included the budget trip-planning website Expedia, the interactive movie guide Cinemania, and the multimedia digital encyclopedia Encarta. Bill and Melinda dated for six years before Bill proposed and in 1994 they got married on the Hawaiian island of Lanai. In 1996 Melinda had her first child, Jennifer Katharine Gates. It was then that Melinda decided to leave Microsoft to focus on parenting and her philanthropic efforts, Melinda and Bill then went on to have two more children, Rory John and Pheobe Adele.

Melinda refers to her first trip to Africa in 1993 as her ‘turning point.’ While she was walking down the beach in Zanzibar she was overcome with emotions due to the devastation she had witnessed. “It was incredible...But what really touched us, actually, were the people, and the extreme poverty," explained Melinda during a TED Talk. “We started asking ourselves questions. Does it have to be like this?” From there the Gates Foundation was born, a now $50.7 billion organization. Although the foundation's initial goal was to place computers and Microsoft products in libraries all over the United States, over the years Melinda has expanded the organization's vision to include worldwide improvements in education. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation's efforts also came to address global poverty and health issues. In 2006, Warren Buffett made a landmark donation of $30 billion to the foundation. In anticipation of dividing its assets among the most pressing needs, Melinda then restructured the organization into three departments: worldwide health, global development, and U.S. community and education. One of the foundation's primary global health objectives has been to develop prevention strategies, vaccines, and treatments for diseases such as HIV/AIDS, malaria, and tuberculosis. In 2012 Melinda pledged $560 million toward improving access to contraception for women in third-world countries. Melinda and her husband also remain committed to changing the state of education in the United States. Their foundation helps students fund their studies through the Gates Millennium Scholars program. Demonstrating their support of progressive workplace policies, Melinda and Bill Gates announced in 2015 that employees of their foundation would receive up to a year's paid leave after the birth of a child or the adoption of a child. The following year, Melinda was recognized for her philanthropic work with the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Barack Obama. Melinda has gone on to address pressing questions regarding President Donald Trump’s policies, Melinda said it was important to maintain a strong relationship with the administration, but suggested that Trump could set a better example as a role model. “I wish our president would treat people, and especially women, with more respect when he speaks and tweets,” she wrote. Most recently due to the global threat in the form of the novel coronavirus. Melinda and her husband devoted their foundation's considerable resources toward combating the outbreak, pairing with leading pharmaceutical companies to fund the development of a vaccine.

Melinda plans to give away a vast majority of her fortune to charity. This idea gained popularity through her and Bill's 2010 campaign the Giving Pledge - in which billionaires can promise to donate their fortune to philanthropy. Along with the Gates, Giving Pledge co-founder Warren Buffett has stated he will be putting more than 99 percent of his wealth toward philanthropy. Melinda believes that giving back is so vital in fact that her three children will not inherit their parents billions, instead this money will be donated to the foundation, “We want to strike a balance where they have the freedom to do anything but not a lot of money showered on them so they could go out and do nothing,” described Melinda. Melinda has instilled philanthropy into all of her children, taking them to Africa a number of times to do philanthropic work. In a TED talk last year, Melinda said, “As they get older, they know that our family belief is about responsibility, that we are in an unbelievable situation just to live in the United States and have a great education, and we have a responsibility to give back to the world.” Among Melinda’s many admirers is Warren Buffett, who agreed to give 80% of his multi-billion dollar fortunate to the Gates Foundation. Buffett, a close friend of the family, has said Bill is, “...smart as hell, obviously...but in terms of seeing the whole picture, Melinda's smarter.” On top of her philanthropy work Melinda has spoken out about the responsibility that the more fortunate have to give back, in 2014, Gates joined her husband for a speech during Stanford's commencement. She gave advice to students and families about hands-on charity saying, “Let your heart break. It will change what you do with your optimism.” Melinda is constantly fighting for women’s equality on top of her efforts to provide contraception to women in third-world countries, she's also recently begun a new initiative to transform the 21st-century workplace into one of inclusivity, specifically when it comes to the gender gap. Melinda describes the legacy she hopes to leave saying, “On the day I die, I want people to think that I was a great mom and a great family member and a great friend. I care about that more than I care about anything else.”

It is hard not to admire or aspire to be someone like that of Melinda Ann French. Using her good fortune to help in any way she can. Any person can take a page out of Melinda’s book and realize that in the world we live in it is vital to give back, that the world is so much bigger than you and me. Melinda works to empower everyone, specifically women. In 2019 she published her first novel, The Moment of Lift: How Empowering Women Changes the World. Weaving personal anecdotes from her philanthropic career with facts about the world's most pressing issues. She seeks to not only help but empower women in order to make a better world. If you are seeking a new role model, any woman, man or child could find one in Melinda Ann French.