Melinda French Gates

SOURCE OF WEALTH: Microsoft, private investments

FUNDING AREAS: Global health and development, gender equity, U.S. education, advancing philanthropy

OVERVIEW: Melinda French Gates is among the world's leading philanthropists. She co-founded the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation in 2000 with her then husband, Bill Gates, founder of Microsoft, and has made philanthropy her full-time focus. In 2010, she, along with Bill Gates and Warren Buffett, started the Giving Pledge, a campaign that encourages the wealthiest people in the world to give at least half of their wealth to philanthropic causes. The Gates Foundation’s primary focus areas are global health and development. Other interests include K-12 education in the U.S. and gender equity. She established Pivotal Ventures with the aim of investing and incubating projects for the economic development of women and families in the U.S. and abroad. The couple divorced in 2021 but agreed to continue to run their foundation jointly for the near future. However, in an updated Giving Pledge letter, French Gates signaled her intention to establish a philanthropic identity separate from that of the Gates Foundation.

BACKGROUND: Melinda French Gates joined Microsoft after graduating from Duke University with a degree in in computer science and economics. She held various positions at the company and contributed to the development or distribution of many of Microsoft’s signature products, including Expedia, Publisher, Money, Encarta, and Word. She married CEO Bill Gates in 1994 and left the company two years later to focus on raising a family and, later, developing the largest philanthropic foundation in history. She received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Barack Obama for her philanthropic efforts. French Gates divorced Bill Gates in 2021.

ISSUES:

WOMEN AND GIRLS: French Gates’s company, Pivotal Ventures, makes investments and runs incubation programs that promote the economic development of women and girls. Pivotal Ventures has supported initiatives in the areas of technology education, career development, women’s participation in politics, paid family medical leave, caregiving and mental health. It has made grants to groups like ReflectUS, The Ascend Fund, Collective Future Fund, and Break Through Tech. In 2023, Pivotal Ventures committed up to $20 million to match gifts to help put women into leadership positions in their communities.

French Gates has also given to the Gender Fund, which seeks to advance equality and women’s leadership in Africa, Asia and Latin America through large, long-term and flexible funding. In 2021, the Gates Foundation committed $2.1 billion to promote gender equity in global pandemic recovery initiatives. The program’s priorities include reproductive healthcare, including expanding access to contraceptives, and job and leadership training for women and girls in developing countries.

GLOBAL HEALTH: In June 2021, the Gates Foundation committed $2.1 billion to support gender equality in international pandemic recovery efforts, naming reproductive health care as an area of priority. Improving health outcomes in developing countries has been the top priority of the foundation’s philanthropy from the start. Its Global Health Division seeks "to harness advances in science and technology to save lives in developing countries." Developing and delivering vaccinations and other life-saving interventions is a major focus. It has given billions in funding to secure advances against HIV, malaria, polio and other diseases. Improving children's health and maternal well-being are also key goals of the foundation, along with expanding access to family planning services. The foundation has pledged up to $100 million in funding against the COVID-19 pandemic and announced a five-year $1.6 billion commitment to the Gavi Vaccine Alliance, which aims to provide routine vaccines to 300 million children in vulnerable communities around the world and to deliver COVID-19 vaccines to low-income countries.

GLOBAL DEVELOPMENT: French Gates is a highly visible advocate of women's empowerment as a key to advancing global development. The Gates Foundation “works to achieve gender equality by integrating gender across the foundation’s global work and investing in women’s economic empowerment, women’s leadership, and removing the barriers for women and girls to thrive.” In addition to its health-related programs, the foundation supports programs through its Global Development Division that work "to identify and fund high-impact solutions that can help hundreds of millions of people lift themselves out of poverty and build better lives." Priorities include helping small farmers in developing countries to sustainably increase production and sell more crops, advancing financial inclusion, improving water and sanitation systems, providing emergency response to humanitarian disasters, and more.

U.S. EDUCATION: While the bulk of Gates philanthropy prioritizes global issues, the foundation is a major funder of work and education in the United States. The foundation states that its primary focus in this area is to ensure "that all students graduate from high school prepared for college and have an opportunity to earn a post-secondary degree with labor-market value." To this end, the foundation has funded a wide array of K-12 initiatives around the United States, as well as extensive educational research. It describes itself as playing a "catalytic" role to advance innovation that might otherwise not occur. The Gates Foundation plays a major role in developing and implementing the Common Core State Standards.

ADVANCING PHILANTHROPY: French Gates is a leading advocate of more philanthropic giving, especially by the world's wealthiest people. In addition to developing the Giving Pledge, the Gates Foundation is a major grantmaker to organizations that research or promote philanthropy. 

LOOKING FORWARD: French Gates announced via an updated Giving Pledge letter that she will no longer be giving the bulk of her wealth to the Gates Foundation and has indicated that she will branch out to conduct her own individual philanthropic endeavors focusing on women, girls, and other marginalized people. She has also said she will seek out “new partners, ideas, and perspectives.” Only in her 50s, expect French Gates to remain a billionaire philanthropist to watch.

LINKS: