Melinda Gates

And it was when we would go watch that rocket launching and the Earth would be shaking and the rocket was rumbling and it finally pushed against the forces of gravity and went to the moon. To me, that's the same thing I've seen with twenty years of work through the Foundation for Women, that if we can help lift up all women, we will change the world. But there's a lot of forces pushing women down today. It's the

largest foundation in the world. It has assets of how much now now we have assets of about fifty billion dollars. You create the foundation from the wealth created by Mike soft And then one day um Warren Buffett called you and Bill and said, guess what, I don't know what to do with my wealth, but I want to give

it to you because I like what you're doing. Is that essentially it that's essentially at Warren's plan was that his wife, Susie was very involved in philanthropy, and his plan had been to give it away through the foundation that he and she had, but she passed away early, unexpectedly, and so then yes, he came in surprised. Bill and I said that the vast majority would go through our foundation, and then three that his children had, and the Susan T.

Buffett Foundation. So when somebody called you and said, guess what I'm giving you fifty or sixty billion, you didn't expect? What did you say? Thank you? Or I can't believe this, or I can honestly tell you that. Bill and I took a walk after that discussion and we were alone and we both cried, and um, I think we cried, both of us because to to know Warren's generosity and that we would be able to do even so much more than we were already doing for people around the world,

it was just unbelievably touch moment and touching moment of friendship. Okay, so when you're doing the work of the foundation. The two of you, you're going to substar in Africa, among other places, a lot of travel. Eventually, you decided that you wanted to focus a little bit more on women's issues, and one of the first ones you thought about was contraception. Now, you are a committed Catholic, and was it difficult for you to say we should focus more of the foundation's

efforts on contraception. What was Bill's view? And did you get a lot of flak from people in the Catholic hierarchy. Yeah. So Bill was a hundred percent supportive of this decision, and he knew that I had learned so much in the developing world from talking to women. He knew I had looked at the data, I looked at where we didn't have data, and I was able to talk to him about and he knew, this is the greatest anti poverty tool. We have, the greatest and if you make

sure that women have access all over the world. Two hundred million women were asking the world to have this tool, and we weren't delivering it as a world. So I knew when I decided to take this on that the reason we weren't delivering. It was political controversy in our own country and religious issues, so it was a difficult decision for me because of my Catholic roots. I am

still Catholic. But when I met so many women around the world and they would discuss with me that this was literally a life and death crisis for them as a mom. They would say, if I have another baby too soon, I'll die in childbirth, or I have five children, it's not fair to my last child or the others to have another one when I can't feed them. And so I had to wrestle with my Catholic faith and say, what do I believe in. I believe in saving lives,

and so this was the right thing to do. And did you find sometimes a woman would say, take my child because I can't raise this child more than once. So I wouldn't be often. I learned from Warren's wife, Susie, as she told me early, if you can go in anonymously, so I'll go in too many rural settings, a woman from the west pair khaki pants and a T shirt. I'll give you an example. I was in northern India and I visited a health clinic. So I went into

a village to talk to a woman. And by the time I was finished speaking with her, I asked her kind of had one last question. I said, so, what hope do you have? Her name was Mina. What hope do you have? And she looked down for a long time. She cast her eyes down. I thought, oh, no, I've asked something inappropriate, and she finally looked up at me and she said, the truth is, I have no hope. I have no hope for feeding this child or that one,

or educating them. Please take them home with you. And when that happens, it was not the first time it had happened to me. It is heartbreaking to see a woman who loves her clearly loves her sons that much, but to know they would be better off going home with a stranger. That's heartbreaking. And that's the story of women, many, many women and families around the world. So annually you have a letter that is written to the Foundation by

the Foundation heads you and Bill. Originally was written by Bill. And then when you said Bill, I want to get some of the women's issues in what did he say? Yes? So, first of all, the idea for the annual letter came from Warren and Bill and I both thought that was a really good idea. However, we had three very young children at the time, and I was on several boards and working at the foundation as an executive, and I said, Bill, I don't have time to put pen to paper. I

just can't do it. And Bill said that's okay, I'll do it. And so Bill started writing it and he did a great job, but he got very used to writing it alone. So when this contraceptive initiative that I was leading came out, I said Bill, I really want to write about this in the annual letter. And he felt like the annual letter was going quite well from his perspective, and so we had some difficult discussions at home, and I finally wrote a sidebar in the annual letter.

The next year, we discussed it again before penn was put to paper, um and I wrote a piece of the annual letter about a third and the next year we had another discussion and I wrote half, and now I always write half of the annual letter. We have to sometimes have those uncomfortable conversations. Bill and I believe in equality, but did we really have it in our voice?

Not yet, And so we've worked on that systematically over time, and now I can tell you my husband is a hundred percent committed to making sure I have my voice fully in the world. Okay, so, like most married couples, you have disagreements from time to time. Sure, sure, I think every marriage does, and I think I believe in marriage you should have a little bit of healthy grist because that's how you move forward. Let's talk about your

beginning of your life. You grew up in Dallas, and you went on all girls Catholic school and you went to Duke. Did you where else did you think of going? Well? Actually, the first place I thought I wanted to go it was Notre Dame because many of my girlfriends in high school's dad's had gone there. But when I went my dad and I went to visit Notre Dame, they were phasing out computer science. They thought it was a fat I knew I wanted to study computer science in college.

Then I saw Duke. They just had a big aunt from IBM too great computer Labs, and I said, this is where I'm going. You were not on the basketball team, right, everybody Duke doesn't play basketball, and not everybody I went to the games, though I love them and you point out in your book that interestingly, women were more involved in computer science years ago than maybe today. Why was that. Yes, So at the time I was in college in the late nineteen eighties, we had about thirty seven percent of

college undergrads and computer science for women. So we were on our way up, we thought, like law and medicine, and that has since dropped down about seventeen or eighteen percent.

Now it's on a slight uptick to nineteen percent. We don't actually know why women have dropped out of computer science, but there's some theories looking at the data we do have, and that is that personal computers were really promoted to boys as a home gaming device, and women and girls said I'm out, and then it became this self referential circle. You want a special program was a five year program where you get an undergraduate degree and an m b a R. So for five years you have your degree,

are about to have your degree. So you were interviewing at computer company. So there was a small company that was interviewed, I guess at Duke as well, called Microsoft. I was part of the first hiring class of MBAs at Microsoft, and uh, there were nine men and me. So you go to Microsoft and as it as good as you think, well, we were changing the world. I loved that. I love the innovative nature. I love creating products.

I did consider leaving Microsoft, though, within about two years, because I was um the culture was abrasive, quite honestly, and um, I didn't and I could play that game. I knew how to do the debate. I knew how to stand up for my idea, stand up for my team's ideas. But I didn't like myself and I didn't like how I was treating other people when I go to the grocery store out in the world or interact

with other people. And so I thought about leaving. And then I thought, no, I'm just I don't think this will work. But I'll try being myself in this culture and just see if it works, and if not, I'll go take some other job. And um, I started to be myself and I started to build teams that were collaborative and that worked together more and we're less abrasive. And uh, it turned out I could recruit people from all over the company, to my surprise, to work on

these teams. So when did you first meet Bill So? I actually first met Bill So three weeks into my job. I'd never been to New York City. I never hailed a cab. Microsoft sent me to New York for a business meeting. And so my female roommate. Microsoft used to make you have another roommate when you went traveling on the road. My female roommate said, hey, women, you're done with your business meeting across town, why don't you come to this dinner? And I said, great, came from across town,

sat down at a dinner. There were two chairs open because I came late from this meeting h that I was at, and um, I sat down. Next year was empty. Ten minutes later, Bill came in, sat down next to me. And so that's when I first met Bill, about three weeks into the job, and he said, wow, how about getting to know me better? He didn't say that. Then, he sort of said, A bunch of us are going

out dancing tonight. Why don't you come? And I said, well, I actually have some other plans from somebody I knew from business school tonight. Um. And then back at Microsoft a few months later. Everybody back then used to work late on Friday nights, quite late on Saturday. You'd worked all about three or four o'clock and so, um, my car was part next to his in a parking lot and he struck up a conversation and we talked for a while and then he said, um. He asked me

if I would go out with him eventually too. This was Saturday, two weeks from Friday night, and I said, two weeks from Friday night. Like I was twenty two years old, you know. I was like, I have no idea what I'm doing two weeks from Friday night. I said, that's not quite spontaneous enough for me, and he said, okay, well you give me Can I take your phone number? So he did called me about an hour later at my apartment and said, well, is this spontaneous enough for you?

How about tonight? But then he said, but I have a user group meeting and a dinner I have to go to. So how about a glass of wine downtown? I thought a user group meeting on a Saturday night, but I agreed to me him for a glass of wine. That was our first date. And was it hard to work at the company while people knew that you were dating the CEO founder? Yeah? So I um, so the first date with Bill, I thought I would go out with him once, maybe twice, and I just thought, well,

he'd be interesting. Obviously, he's running this company that's doing all these amazing things in the world. Then when I realized we were going to start dating more after the first two dates, I thought, this is tricky and I'm not sure I want to do this, because I had worked really hard, I mean computer science to get my m b A. I studied economics, and I thought this, I'm not sure this is going to go well for me. And I remember talking to my parents on the phone,

particularly my mom. She's like, this is not a good idea, and I said, yeah, but he's really interesting and he actually has a big heart that I think a lot of people don't see, and I don't know why. I've sort of gotten to see that side of him. And so what I decided to do was that, um, I would date him, but I made it known in the company.

I didn't try to hide it, and I made it incredibly clear to the teams that I was managing, that I had these very bright lines, and that I did not go home from Microsoft and talked to Bill about work because I'm preparing teams to go into meetings with senior leadership, including Bill, and they're nervous, right, and I'm having to prepare them, prepare myself. And the last thing I could do is go home and talk to him.

They had to know I had their their back in the meeting, and so I just had to have very bright lines around that and we made that work. Not worked out, it did work out. It's hard to believe that in the first night that you met him that I can't see Bill going out and being a dancer. Is he a big dancer. I wouldn't have pictured he'd be going out dancing at night. He likes to. Okay, okay, you decided when your children came that you wanted to spend more time with them, and you you left Microsoft.

I surprised Bill and told him I wanted to leave Microsoft, Yes, And his reaction was really because he knew I loved working and I loved working at Microsoft, and he also knew I had that piece of my brain that love to be be on the working side. So he was quite surprised when I told him I was going to leave. Did you then go to the foundation full time after your children were a little bit older. My whole issue about how much I was going to work at the

foundation is. I had it timed for when our kids would get older, so I knew until our last daughter went off to preschool, I was not going to be full time. Once I knew she was going to be in preschool, my plan always then was to work full time. Let's talk about the issues of women in Subhan Africa and some of the other things you would address in your book. You point out that in sub Saharan Africa and other places, there are child marriages. Women are forced

to marry at six, seven, eight years old. Why is

why does that happen? Quite often a family will marry their daughter off because one, they then don't have to feed her, so that's less resources from their family, and two they also want to protect the family's honors and um that is a cultural barrier that is horrible for girls because they then often don't go to secondary school, or if they're in secondary school, um, they're pulled out of school, their moved to a village often where they oh no one, it's not even close to their home.

It's a horrific thing for a girl. She basically becomes the property of her husband's family or her mother in law. So what have you tried to do to prevent some of this occur. The only way you can overcome cultural barriers is first you going in very sensitive ways with partners, but then the community has to commit to it. Another area you talked about in the book is a situation where you have female cutting, genital cutting. What is the purpose of that and how frequent is that done with

young women around the world. That is still a tradition, particularly in a lot of northern Africa, and it is horrific for a young girl. Young girls bleed to death. It is trauma, a traumatic event in their lives. Villagers do it for different reason. They believe it protects the girl's honor. They believe that they if they love their daughter, they will do it. But what I have known is that when education comes in. I talked to um, a village leader and elder, and a group of women who

used to cut their daughters and no longer do. In a group of women who are the cutters who no longer do, and they said, you know, when people bring in education from outside and they talk to us about things, how people view this in other places in the world, it starts to change our mind and we start to question our past and then we create change. Another one you talk about is abusive relationships, and husbands are very

abusive to their spouses in many different ways. And you point out in the book and must have been difficult to write about this, and you had an abusive relationship as well before you were married. Yeah. So the reason I even write a page in the book about having been in an abusive relationship is that I want people to know it can happen to anyone. UM. Its silences your voice. It is a way of silencing a woman's voice in a marriage, or in her workplace or her community.

And for me, I lost my self confidence. And millions of women are being either harassed or abused UM in all kinds of places. And again it's silence as women. And so we have to talk about this barrier and we have to lift it up. And what we can do is collect data about it. The world doesn't actually collect data on abuse, and then we can go in and name it and recognize it and all commit to changing it everywhere in the world. Now, a few years ago, you,

Bill and Warren decided to launch the Giving Pledge. Now, what was the purpose of the Giving Pledge? And how many people have now signed it. Yes. So the purpose this was Warren's big idea, which was the Giving Pledge, was to say, if you have great wealth, if you're a billionaire in our country or anywhere in the world, you can afford to give half away, and that is the right thing for society. Bill and Warren are really clear that they could not have founded their businesses if

it had been saying Malawi or Mozambique. And so we benefit from what society gives us the infrastructure, and so those resources at least have should go back to society. You've been a big help to us in this, David. We now have a hundred and ninety families who have committed to the Giving Pledge and twenty two different countries around the world. There's a bit of a reaction against wealthy people saying, let's put our money here, put our

money there. How do you respond to that? I think so what I know to be true is that Bill and Warren and I believe that we should not have this inequity that exists in the United States. We need to do something about that. But we we are lucky. I meet so many people around the world who would like to live in our country. Who would like to live in our democracy, in our capitalistic system, but we do have gaps in it and we need to do

things to fix those gaps. The thing that Bill and I try to be most cognitizant of is what's the role of philanthropy. All philanthropy can be is that catalytic wedge. We can try things, we can experiment with our own money where you wouldn't want a government to expaire with taxpayer money, but then we have to prove it out

and then it's up to government to scale up. So we feel that philanthropy with government, with a private sector, with a non governmental organization, that that set of partnerships in that ecosystem can do the best for the world. So many people are probably wondering what it's like to be for quite some time the richest couple in the world. Um, is it make it possible for you to go to

a restaurant? Can you go to a movie? Well, first of all, we are incredibly privileged and lucky to have the resources we have from Microsoft that is that full stop. We do give up some privacy by having that, but I have to say most people are incredibly respectful Seattle is a lovely place to live. They'll grow up there, and so the people who come up it's more because they're proud of what he's built with Microsoft and that's being carried on or what we're doing with the Foundation.

So I we try to look at those. I try to look at those as moments of grace, and we try to be out in the world. Bill and I still love to go out to movie as we like to go out to restaurants. So you told me a couple of stories about your life together, and I might ask you about them. Um. You told me once when you drop your first your oldest daughter off in college. Um, like anybody that drops their kids off in school and college, the first they said, well you need this, you need that.

So you decided you'd go to Lows. I think it was to get some additional things to help your daughter's room look better. I can't picture Bill Gates going through Lows shopping. Well, it was actually really sweet moment. We're looking for an extension cord, which wasn't the easiest thing to find. It turns out it Lows. But when Bill goes into a store like that, it's like he's in a big laboratory. He's just curious about everything, and so Jen and I kept having to drag him and say,

come on, we got to find the extension cords. Stay focused, and he mostly wasn't recognized until we got in the cashier's line. But you know, he just plays along with it and it's fine. Jackie Kennedy once famously said that, um, if you mess up raising your children, nothing else in life really matters. Absolutely, And as parents, we know that the hardest thing to do is raised children. So you've had to shield three children from the enormous wealth and publicity.

I have tried with our children to always to first have them know that they are loved. Most importantly, they are loved no matter what, and their job in life is to find their talents and whatever those talents are, we will support that and we and it's up to them to bring those talents in the world no matter

what they want to be. I also, when the children were young, have always taken them out first in the Seattle community, even when they were kindergarten age um, and then at age appropriate times when they got to be about ten or eleven, out into the developing world to not only do a beautiful Safari, but to actually see what life is like on the ground and the And the last thing I will say is because when you have great means, you don't have money as a buffer.

My kids have always had an allowance, and UM, we've always had an agreement they're not allowed to tell other people their allowance. Neither am I. Because some people would say that's all the gates kids get. Another person would say, whoa, that's too much money that they get in a week. But since they were young, they've always had an allowance that grew over time, and when they wanted something, they either had to use their allowance to buy it or put it on their wish list for Christmas and hope

their grandparents or we would give it. And I would be and I could say to them if they had something they saw in the store they just had to have, I'd say, well, just because I can doesn't mean that I should. But what would you like your legacy to be? Ultimately, you and Bill together for what you've done on the face of the earth, that we helped other people lift themselves up, to help everybody advance into society to advance. And I hope people say about me that I helped

lift up other women. Thank you very much. And again it's a very good book and I highly recommend at the Moment of Left. Thank you very much, Melinda, Thanks David, great conversation. Thank you. That's Melinda Gates, the co founder of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, speaking with Carlisle Group co founder David Rubinstein for his Bloomberg television program Peer to Peer Conversations. I'm June Grosso and I'm at Baxter. This Isenberg m HM.