Melinda Gates

While working with Microsoft, Melinda met Bill Gates at a PC trade show in Manhattan in 1987. She was quite taken aback when her boss asked her for a date which was scheduled two weeks from the date he asked her. She liked his sense of humour and approachability and later realised his busy pace of life that forced him to schedule his commitments in a deliberate manner. The couple dated for six years before they finally got married in 1994, in a private ceremony held at Lanai, Hawaii.

She left her job with Microsoft when her eldest daughter, Jennifer, was born in 1996, to devote more time in raising her children. The couple have two daughters and a son with whom they reside in their estate on the shore of Lake Washington close to Seattle.

During the initial years of her marriage she took some time to adjust her outlook from an employee to the wife of one of the richest persons on earth. From being reserved, she soon took on the role of one of the leading philanthropists in the world. She has a tender spot for women and children in third world countries and has been championing the cause of better education and work opportunities in the developed world.

She was born Melinda Ann French on August 15, 1964, in Dallas, Texas, US, to Raymond Joseph French Jr. and Elaine Agnes Amerland. Her father was an aerospace engineer, who did a side business of renting properties and her mother was a homemaker. She has two younger brothers and an elder sister with whom she was raised in the Roman Catholic faith.

She studied at St Monica Catholic School, where she excelled in academics and was among the top students of her class. She graduated from the Ursuline Academy of Dallas as a valedictorian in 1982. She developed interest in computers and maths while in high school. She completed her bachelor’s degree in economics and computer science from the Duke University in 1986. She went on to earn an MBA from Duke’s Fuqua School of Business in 1887, where she was a member of the Kappa Alpha Theta sorority, Beta Rho Chapter.

After graduating from college, she joined Microsoft in 1987 and was part of several developmental projects in multimedia that include Microsoft Bob, Expedia, Encarta and Publisher. She worked with Microsoft for nine years to rise from a product manager to the position of General Manager of Information Products, till she got married to her boss and gave birth to her first child.

After getting married she served as a member of the board of trustees of Duke University from 1996 to 2003. She is on the board of directors of the Washington Post company and is an active participant in the Bilderberg Group conferences for fostering dialogue between Europe and North America. She was also on the board of directors of Drugstore.com till it was acquired by Walgreens.

She is the co-founder of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation that was initially started as the William H. Gates Foundation in 1994 and later restructured and renamed in 2000 with the aim of globally enhancing healthcare and eradicating extreme poverty. It also aims at increasing educational opportunities and access to information technology in the US by making internet available in all public libraries. She and her husband have donated large sums of money to the foundation in order to support the noble cause.

She chaired the $ 300 million fundraising campaign to expand the facilities at the Seattle Children’s Hospital in 2006 in recognition of which the hospital dedicated the ambulatory care building in her name. She also pledged a large sum of financial assistance towards improving the availability of contraceptives for women in poorer countries.

In 2013, she launched a partnership with Hillary Clinton to gather and supply data for the Clinton Foundation on the progress of women and the girl child around the world since the 1995 United Nations Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing.

She and her husband received the Award for Greatest Public Service Benefiting the Disadvantaged at the Jefferson Awards, 2002.

In 2006 the couple received the Spanish Prince of Asturias Award for International Cooperation in recognition of their charitable work and she was awarded the Insignia of the Order of the Aztec Eagle by Mexico for promoting health and education.

She has received an honorary doctorate in medicine from the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, Sweden; honorary degree from the University of Cambridge and honorary Doctor of Humane Letters by Duke University as a tribute to her charitable work and financial contributions.

She was ranked number three in the Forbes list of 100 Most Powerful Women in 2013, 2014 and 2017.

She was made an honorary Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 2013 for her philanthropy and international development work.