Melinda French Gates reflects on legacy of Gates Foundation as it announces it will close in 2045

Melinda French Gates entered some of the most powerful circles while leading the foundation she co-founded with her ex-husband, Bill Gates.

She petitioned heads of state and convened other billionaires. Along with Gates, she won the trust of one of America’s most admired investors, Warren Buffett, who has given more than $43 billion to the former couple’s foundation.

French Gates, who studied computer science and worked at Microsoft, the company Gates created, exited the Gates Foundation last year to pursue philanthropy and investment through her own organization, Pivotal Ventures, which she started in 2015. The foundation changed its name from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation after her departure.

At an ELLE Women of Impact event in New York in April, which also launched her new memoir, French Gates said she left, in part, to respond to the U.S. rollback of women’s rights.

“I thought, I want to be much more nimble than this, and I want to be able to set the agenda by myself without having to ask anybody else, and do it with my partners,” she said.

French Gates offered written responses to The Associated Press’ questions about the foundation’s 25th anniversary and its decision to close in 2045. She said the former couple had always intended to spend down their resources.

“Ultimately, though,” she wrote, “the timeline was Bill’s decision to make with the board of trustees.”

The following responses have been edited for length.

Q: What do you hope the foundation’s legacy will be?

A: To me, the greatest measure of success would be if long after the foundation closed, someone, somewhere, was living a life that looked different because we existed. We talked a lot there about unlocking virtuous cycles. I like to think that right now, the foundation’s work is contributing to a child getting a vaccine or a woman opening her first bank account — and that decades from now, their families and communities are going to continue to look different, because of what that child and that woman unlocked for the people around them.

Q: What specific areas did you influence at the foundation?

A: I was excited for us to launch the Giving Pledge because I believe that the most responsible thing to do with great wealth is give it away — and that you have an obligation to society to give it away as effectively as possible. I think it’s important for people in that position to set norms around giving generously and to learn as much as possible from each other about how to be effective in their philanthropy.

(As for gender), for too long, global health and development efforts treated women and girls as secondary — if they were considered at all. Data wasn’t collected on their experiences. Their specific health needs were often ignored.

There were so many questions that needed to be asked: What is the cost of all the unpaid labor women do at home? Will mobile banking make a difference if women don’t have equal access to cellphones? Why are so many infectious diseases especially dangerous for women?

We opened a gender equality division, but not just that — we made gender equality a priority across all of our work. And we put a lot of resources into expanding access to contraception, starting with a big commitment we made in 2012.

Q: Why did you invest in opening more offices in other countries?

A: When you’re doing this kind of work, it doesn’t take long to see that solutions that seem great on paper may not work in reality. We funded community toilets in India that people — especially women —wouldn’t use because they were dangerous to go to at night. We funded vaccines in Vietnam that had to be kept cold, but came in packaging that didn’t fit into the small refrigerators most people had there. We funded a simple pump to help East African farmers irrigate their land, but women — who account for half of all smallholder farmers — wouldn’t buy it, because they didn’t want to be seen swaying their hips in the way the pump required.

There are many ways to learn about the cultural norms and logistical issues that determine whether a solution is feasible — and they all boil down to engaging people with local knowledge and lived experience, and trusting what they tell you.

Q: Some foundation goals — like eradicating polio and controlling malaria — depend on the generosity of other countries and donors. How can you accomplish those goals given recent cuts to international aid?

A: It’s easy for people to forget — or maybe they didn’t ever know — how hopeless the situation seemed around the year 2000, when malaria, tuberculosis and HIV were totally out of control. Since then, efforts funded, in large part, by development aid have saved more than 65 million lives from those diseases alone.

No doubt the work has just gotten a lot harder, but we never thought it was going to be easy. And we still have the key ingredients of success. The pipeline of innovations has never been stronger. More lower-income countries are taking a leading role. As some donors announce cuts, others are stepping up.

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The Associated Press receives financial support for news coverage in Africa from the Gates Foundation and for news coverage of women in the workforce and in statehouses from Melinda French Gates’ organization, Pivotal Ventures.

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Associated Press coverage of philanthropy and nonprofits receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content. For all of AP’s philanthropy coverage, visit https://apnews.com/hub/philanthropy.