While many know her for being married to Microsoft's Bill Gates, Melinda Gates is an accomplished
person in her own right. From her start in a high school programming class to her years
as a billionaire philanthropist, here's the untold truth of Melinda Gates.
While best known for her philanthropic work, Melinda Gates is also a serious nerd — and
that's part of what brought her and Bill Gates together. As she relates in her book, "The
Moment of Lift: How Empowering Women Changes the World," her father was an engineer on
the Apollo program, and as a child growing up in Dallas, she enjoyed road trips to watch
rocket launches, a regular family activity. When she was in high school, she got her first
introduction to computers and was hooked, learning to program in Basic, according to
the Independent. This interest led her to major in computer science and economics at
Duke.
And this, in turn, led her to Bill Gates. After graduating, she arranged for an interview
with a small, new-ish software company called Microsoft. She mentioned the interview to
a recruiter, who said,
"If you get an offer from them, take it, because the chance for advancement there is terrific."
The decision to marry a person is one of the biggest and most important choices you'll
ever make, so it's wise to reflect on it carefully before you pop the question or accept a proposal.
Melinda knows this well, as she got an accidental view of how seriously Bill took his decision
to marry her. According to CNBC Make It, the couple had been dating for about a year, and
Bill realized it was time for a decision.
He said of his choice,
"We cared a lot for each other and there were only two possibilities: either we were going
to break up or we were going to get married."
But instead of taking a walk to think it over or calling up a friend to discuss it, Bill
used another decision-making tactic. He set up a whiteboard in his bedroom and started
writing down all the pros and cons of marrying Melinda — just as Melinda walked in and
saw what he was doing. It's not known exactly what he wrote on that whiteboard, but it's
a safe bet that on that day, the pros outnumbered the cons.
Melinda Gates' passion for issues involving women and children comes from a deeply personal
place — she's a mother of three herself. As she recounts in her book, she made the
choice to step down from her career at Microsoft to raise her children, noting that she was
fortunate to be financially able to make this choice.
Today, her children are thriving young adults. Oldest daughter Jennifer Gates is a medical
student, her career choice inspired by her parents' work in public health campaigns,
according to Parade. Her middle child and only son, Rory Gates, has attended the University
of Chicago, and is, according to an essay written by his mother in Time, quote, "compassionate
and curious" and is, quote, "intelligent and well-read and deeply informed." Her youngest
daughter, Phoebe Gates, is known to be a gifted dancer, and has studied at the School of American
Ballet at the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts and Juilliard, according to Parade.
Melinda Gates' passion for philanthropy was born in part by tragedy. At her wedding shower
in 1993, her terminally ill mother, understanding the enormous fortune her daughter would soon
marry into, read her a serious letter. According to the Independent, it read in part, quote,
"From those to whom much is given, much is expected."
Her mother died a few months later, but her words stayed with Melinda. This advice inspired
the creation of the William H. Gates Foundation, which was run by Bill Gates' father and dedicated
to putting laptops in schools. But after reading about how millions of children were dying
of diseases, such as malaria and tuberculosis, in the developing world, she shifted her philanthropic
focus to world poverty. The current Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation grew from this concern, and
today has 1,600 staff members and distributes $5 billion in grants to 135 counties around
the world each year, according to The New York Times.
Melinda Gates' philanthropic efforts have not only helped disadvantaged people around
the world, but they have won her, along with Bill Gates, numerous international awards.
In 2002, she and Bill were co-winners of the Jefferson Award for Public Service in the
category "Greatest Public Service Benefiting the Disadvantaged," according to the Jefferson
Awards website. In 2006, the couple earned the Princess of Asturias Award for International
Cooperation from the Princess of Asturias Foundation, according to the foundation's
website.
This was just the start of the recognition and appreciation she has received for her
work. She was named one of Glamour's women of the year in 2013 for her work as, quote,
"an effective and strategic leader [...] dedicated to solving the world's toughest problems."
In 2016, she and Bill — along with numerous other luminaries in their fields, such as
architect Frank Gehry and actor Tom Hanks — were awarded the Presidential Medal of
Freedom by then-president Barack Obama. As if this weren't enough, the pair has also
been named, along with musician and philanthropist Bono, Time's Persons of the Year in 2005,
according to CNN.
Although she's led a privileged life as the wife of a billionaire, Melinda Gates has made
supporting the underprivileged — especially women and children — a central concern in
her life, according to NPR. And her concern for the less fortunate is not just lip service.
She's not one to just cut a few checks, attend a few charity balls a year, and call it a
day.
As if co-directing the high-profile, multi-billion-dollar Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation weren't enough
work, Melinda also founded Pivotal Ventures, which its website calls, quote, "an investment
and incubation company to advance social progress in the United States." In practice, this means
Pivotal Ventures invests in and supports initiatives and people who work towards greater equity
and access to opportunity for underserved groups. As an example, Pivotal Ventures recently
co-organized the $40 million Equality Can't Wait Challenge, which awards grants to promising
leaders who are women of color.
"And I decided that we needed to move the foundation to do more of this work."
Melinda Gates' 2019 book, "The Moment of Lift: How Empowering Women Changes the World," is
a far cry from your typical celebrity tell-all memoir. Instead of name-dropping or showing
glimpses of a life of luxury, Gates uses her book to promote the rights of women and turn
the spotlight on others — specifically, the women around the world who inspired her
during her travels for work on the Gates Foundation. She also shares revelations from her own life
that led her to her mission of promoting women and children: Even as a wealthy, educated
professional woman in the U.S., she had to make some hard personal choices about balancing
work and family — choices, she noted, that men rarely have to consider.
"Because when we put women at the center, they take care of everybody else."
Her book has attracted praise from high places — including from her famous then-husband,
Bill Gates.
He wrote in GatesNotes, his blog,
"I would say this even if I weren't married to the author: 'The Moment of Lift' is a terrific
read. It is a wise, honest, and beautifully written book about how empowering women lifts
up everyone."
"And I wanted to know for women, that we have to share our stories, and it's in that sharing
that we can actually change society."
Melinda Gates' philanthropic efforts aren't limited to the organizations she runs. Rather,
she has been active in a broad range of endeavors, sitting on the board of directors of both
for-profit and not-for-profit organizations. This has allowed her to expand her influence,
apply her business skills to new challenges, and give back to causes meaningful to her.
Among the organizations benefiting from her expertise were her alma mater, Duke University,
whose board of trustees she joined in 1996, according to a press release put out by Duke.
She also served on the board of directors of Drugstore.com, according to the company's
website. In addition, she sat on the board of directors for The Washington Post from
2004 until 2010, according to the Washington Business Journal. These weren't purely symbolic
positions, either, and her experience and skill set were much appreciated.
The Washington Post's CEO, Donald Graham, said of Gates,
"With her knowledge of technology, education and media, Melinda Gates has been a uniquely
wonderful board member, taking time out of one of the world's busiest and most impressive
lives to help our company."
With a net worth close to $70 billion, according to Celebrity Net Worth, Melinda Gates has
more cash than any person could possibly spend in a lifetime. And she's chosen not to spend
it all on herself, instead directing it to charitable causes around the world through
both the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and Pivotal Ventures, her other advocacy organization.
The Gates Foundation alone has an endowment of over $50 billion, according to The New
York Times, and disburses $5 billion in grants annually.
But Gates doesn't just bring money to the table — she brings clout. Besides being
a generous donor, she's proven to have a knack for coaxing others to open their wallets for
worthy causes as well. In 2006, she spearheaded a campaign to raise $300,000 for Seattle Children's
Hospital to fund research and facility improvements and to care for patients unable to pay, according
to a press release from the hospital. How effective was she in this effort? By the time
the campaign was publicly announced, Gates and her team had already managed to raise
$200 million.
Melinda Gates has enough money that she could just give any worthwhile organization a blank
check and consider her work done. And while this would no doubt do a lot of good, Gates
feels there is an even more effective way to support beneficial projects around the
world — get other caring people and organizations on board to help, as Britannica reported.
Thus, despite its vast resources, the Gates Foundation does not singlehandedly fund any
programs, no matter how worthy or urgent they may be. Instead, the foundation enlists other
people and organizations, including companies, other non-profits, and sometimes governments,
to help fund the programs the foundation supports. Melinda Gates has both philosophical and practical
reasons for this approach. First, this multiples the Gates Foundation's impact — their investments
are multiplied by the contributions of others. Second, getting others on board raises the
profile of the causes they support and increases the impact they can make. As Britannica noted,
the philosophy behind this strategy can be summed up in an old African proverb that Melinda
has shared:
"If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go with others."
"Well, it's the most fulfilling thing we've ever done."
Melinda Gates may be walking away from her marriage, but she won't be walking away from
a life of wealth. According to The Guardian, her divorce petition, besides stating that
her marriage to Bill Gates was, quote, "irretrievably broken," requested the court to divide up
their estate, estimated at a whopping $146 billion.
This request is interesting because it suggests the couple did not have a prenuptial agreement.
And Washington State, where the couple met and made their home, is a community property
state, meaning that couples must share their assets equally if they divorce. This means
it's likely Melinda will leave her marriage with around $73 billion. This will make her
the world's second-richest woman. She will also join Mackenzie Scott, formerly married
to Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, in the Seattle billionaire divorcee club. Scott is now the
fourth-wealthiest woman in the world with assets worth $60 billion.
Although the court may divide up their estate, some shared elements of a marriage — a couple's
children, house, or a family-owned business — can't simply be cut in half. This leads
to the most legally and emotionally contentious parts of most divorces: deciding how to divide
up the indivisible.
And sometimes the best solution is for the couple to continue to share responsibility
for assets they've created together. Although it is not yet clear what their split will
look like going forward, Bill and Melinda have agreed to continue sharing leadership
responsibilities for the Gates Foundation, whose mission continues to drive both of them.
Melinda said in a Twitter post,
"We will continue to work together at the foundation, but we no longer believe we can
grow together as a couple in this next phase of our lives."
Check out one of our newest videos right here! Plus, even more List videos about your favorite
celebrities are coming soon. Subscribe to our YouTube channel and hit the bell so you
don't miss a single one.