Drama Queens - Work in Progress: Melinda French Gates

Episode Date: July 10, 2025

Changes are a part of life, and sharing one's experiences can help others navigate their life transitions. That's what philanthropist, businesswoman, and advocate for gender equality, Melinda French Gates, is hoping to do with her new memoir, "The Next Day."Get ready for a deeply personal conversation as Melinda joins Sophia to discuss her life, both in and out of the public eye. From her 'crisis of self' to her path to philanthropy, motherhood, and moving forward after her divorce, Melinda shares it all. Plus, she reveals her 'word of the year' and her work in progress!Melinda's book, "The Next Day: Transitions, Change, and Moving Forward," is out now.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an I-Heart podcast. Hey, everyone, it's Sophia. Welcome to Work in Progress. Welcome back to Work in Progress, friends. This week, we have a guest that encompasses the idea of being a whip-smart woman in the world. Today, I am so geeked to say this to you guys. I'm actually kind of losing my mind. Today, we are joined by none other than Melinda French Gates. She is a philanthropist, a businesswoman, and a global advocate for women and girls. And on a personal note, someone who has leveraged her platform for such goodness in the world, I have looked up to her for my entire adult life.

For the last 25 years, Melinda has led efforts to unlock. a healthier, more prosperous, and more equal future. She did that at the Gates Foundation, and today she heads pivotal, an organization that she formed in 2015 that works to accelerate the pace of progress and advance women's power and influence both here in the United States and all around the world.

And not only does she have one of the most incredible professional resumes in the world, but Melinda has also managed to be an incredibly heartfelt and vulnerable and thoughtful leader for us. She is the author of the best-selling book, The Moment of Lift, out of which she actually created Moment of Lift books and imprint publishing original nonfiction by visionaries that are working to unlock a more equal world. And this year, she is publishing her beautiful memoir the next day.

The book is about transitions, the moments that we step out of our familiar surroundings, and into new landscapes, the space where we're caught in grief or change or success or any kind of transition, really. And she's chosen to open up and reflect about her own life in ways that had me flipping every page saying, yes, exactly. Her story is obviously her own. It's incredibly unique.

And yet everything she shares will all. also feel so personal to you. I know because it felt so personal to me. Because the stories that she's telling illuminate universal lessons, whether they're about loosening the grip of perfectionism, helping friends navigate crisis, embracing uncertainty, all of it. Each and every one of us, no matter who we are or where we are in life, can be sure that we are headed for times of transition. And with incredible warmth and grace, she has given us this book in a moment and time that I think we need some inspiration and some heart medicine more than ever. I am so absolutely honored to have her on the podcast today. Let's dive in with Melinda. Thank you so much for joining me today. It's such an honor to have you on the show as an early

activist and a woman who's tried to use my relative platform to affect some positive change in the world. I have looked up to you for my entire adult career. Yeah, I'm just so touched by this and so excited. Oh, well, I'm really glad we could do this. Me too. And congratulations on the book. It's just so beautiful. Thank you. Thanks. Yeah. Before we dive into that and where we find you today, I'd love to go back in time. And I know you've shared some really beautiful stories about your life, your childhood, you know, what an amazing role model your mother was to you.

But for some of our listeners who maybe haven't read the book yet, can you take us back to, let's say, nine or ten years old and reflect a little bit with us? on who you were as a kid, what your childhood was like, what you were really interested in. So I grew up in Dallas, Texas, in a suburb of Dallas, Texas, very close, tight-knit community. We knew most of our neighbors on our street and on the street behind us. The moms kind of looked out for each other's kids and kind of knew what was, you know, going on, who was at whose house. And as a nine or ten-year-old, one of my favorite things was to ride my bike, being able to ride my bike places. You know, every year I got a little bit more freedom to ride further or farther

away from the house. And just to be able to ride to the creek or ride to the park or eventually take my allowance and ride to my favorite store, just that kind of sense of freedom and discovery. I've always loved summer. I mean, I liked school, but I didn't really love it until I got, honestly, to high school. So in the summers of like when I was nine or ten, I just couldn't wait for summer, you know, for school to be over. And then. just to be outside a lot playing. And I had a really good friend in the neighborhood. My best friend lived across the alley and down one house.

And her mom was extraordinarily outdoors and athletic, which was a bit different than sort of my mom. And so the moms would often sign us up for activities together. And so my best friend, Ellen and I used to go to the park and take swim lessons or go play tennis or whatever our moms could dream up as far as fun summer camps for us. Oh, that's so great. Do you think if you could put a little wrinkle in space time and hang out with yourself for an afternoon, you know, who you are today with your nine-year-old self, do you feel like you would see the woman that you've become in her?

Do you see the same, you know, kind of curiosity about others and excitement for community in that little girl when you look back? I think my sense of loving to be outdoors and loving to play and play in an athletic way. I call it be in my body. I think, and then the sense of discovery, in fact, my word of this year that came kind of came to me before the start of the year is discover. I love that sense of discovery. And so I think I still have a lot of those elements in me. I certainly would never have dreamt that I would become the advocate that I have become for women and girls around the world. That I just never, you just, I couldn't imagine that. But that sort of sense of wonder and discovery and

play, an athletic play, I think that's just been there for a long time. I love that. I was, someone asked me about activism and particularly advocating for girls and girls' education around the world. And I was sort of reflecting, trying to figure. out where the spark was lit. And I said, you know, maybe it was college journalism, political science. And my dad was the one who said, oh, give me a break. You were organizing walkouts at school in the eighth grade. You have always been like this. And I was like, oh, wow, it's so neat when your parents can sort of help you reflect on the things you're passionate about in your adulthood. And so I love that. I bet if I bet if we got to hang out with your nine-year-old self,

there'd be kernels in there for sure. Yeah, I would hope so. I spent a lot of time climbing trees, not being able to bring my tennis shoes inside because they smelled so bad in the summer, you know, because I was out in the creek so much, just slopping around. And it's funny because in Dallas, there isn't a lot of nature nearby. I mean, the park and the creek, but where I live in Seattle, we are just surrounded now by nature. And so one of the things I love to do in the summer with a friend is to paddleboard or kayak or go out on our bikes. But yeah. And I think maybe friendship too. I knew the importance of friendship when I was little. I was lucky enough to have this friend across the alley and then girlfriends in my class. But I think hopefully some of those

elements endure. I love that. And I think those are the things when you look back, you can kind of view the chapters of your life or the moments that helped you make a leap or evolve. And I think that's why your book strikes me so beautifully. The next day is all about, transitions and sometimes it's the thing you're not sure you can do that you you've got to break through your own glass ceiling to achieve or after a loss you have to reflect on what's most important to you I'm curious as to how sitting down to reflect on transition in every sort of version it comes in you know the good the bad the ugly the beautiful what you feel like you've learned about navigating those moments of time that are in the in-between

when something is changing. You know, do you feel like that reflection made you ready to write the book or did writing the book help you leap to the next phase? I think it was honestly a bit of both. I didn't, when I first started thinking about transitions, I was. really, I wasn't thinking about a book. I was thinking about I'd been honored and asked to do the Stanford commencement speech. And when I talked to the class presidents months ahead saying, you know, what would you like me to talk about? What should I not talk about? And one of the things they talked about was that they felt like they were kind of on one track, you know,

get this degree, go to this company or start this thing. And they said, if you think there are room for openings, if you believe in leaving room for openings or new opportunities, can you talk a bit about that. And so as I wrote that speech, I realized, okay, I want to talk about transitions, but it was afterwards that I went, oh, my gosh, I'm turning 60. You know, the speech was last June. I was turning 60 in August. And I thought, my gosh, I have been through so many transitions. And so, wow, maybe I have more to say on this. My mom says that by the time you get to 60, you have a lot of things to say on a lot of topics. Maybe more than you should.

But as I started reflecting on the transitions, as I wrote the book, I realized that in those in-between spaces is where the growth comes and where, and even if there are transitions maybe you didn't expect or you didn't want to go through, if you take the time, you grow a lot and there's a lot of resilience that is formed. And even the transitions you expect or you want to come, they still require sometimes like going to transition to college, you know, transitioning to your first job. It takes a leap of faith and some courage, right? And so I realized, oh, that's actually where the magic is in life. Absolutely. And there was something that struck me really early in the book when you

you were reflecting on being pregnant with your first daughter, Jen, and you talked about retiring from Microsoft at the time. And what really struck me is I realized you were talking about this retirement in a way that felt almost like reflecting on a calling. You knew that motherhood was a calling of sorts, and you also knew that you had the privilege in your marriage at the time to be able to do this, and knowing that you wanted to be the kind of parent that your mother was for you. And I wrote a note to myself, and I said, this seems so beautiful and I wonder if it felt that way and I wonder if it also irked you that it always almost always has to be the woman who makes that choice and then the thing that really

knocked me over was as you reflected further in that early chapter you talked about how that pregnancy gave you freedom you know and you wrote freedom from perfectionism from the crushing relentless societal pressure, et cetera, et cetera. I won't, you know, read you to you the whole way through. But it really shook me because the way you talk about it and you reflect on calling, on freedom, on essentially writing your own permission slip to live the way you want to, you write about it like a craving,

and I don't mean a pregnancy craving, a food craving. I mean like a soulful craving to own yourself. it's such a cool way to open a book because I see so many versions of myself in these versions of you. Is it sort of surreal to shepherd your own story and the story of your daughter and the stories of so many other women in that way? Yeah, and I think until you really, at least for me, until I sat and reflected even more on it. It was just calling, I would just say a knowing. I just knew I could not have the career that I had at Microsoft, which I loved, this hard, charging nine-year career that I had always wanted.

You know, I went from computer science to business school to that. But I knew I couldn't be the kind of mother I wanted to be unless I stopped doing that. And look, it is an enormous privilege, enormous. And I even knew that at the time, that I had enough resources that I could stay home, right? And it's funny because I also always knew I would go back and do something. I didn't know what, but I knew it wasn't going to be the same pace as what I was doing at Microsoft. And then I did. I got into it, and it just felt so good.

It felt exactly like what I wanted to do. I had summers back. One of the things I lamented when I went to Microsoft was it wasn't like college or high school where you had the summer off or your nine or 10-year-old self. And so all of a sudden I had the summers back and I have this little baby I can play with. Like, you know, I could take her with her sand toys to a beach nearby or a picnic with other moms or bicycle with her. But yes, I didn't realize at the time that I was chartering a course for myself.

of who I wanted to be in life. And I will say that as much as I absolutely loved it in the beginning, I did have a crisis of self about 18 months or two years into it because we moved from this beautiful kind of idyllic family house that I picked out during our engagement down the street into this enormous mansion. And I really had a crisis of self then because I was no longer a working mom.

a working woman. I have this baby, but here I am living in, you know, a house with a gate way up the hill and more security and much larger than I had wanted. So I really had to find myself in that period. And in a way, eventually philanthropy found me or I found myself in it. And that is something I never, ever would have predicted in life, ever. Well, and that through line, because what I'm hearing you reflect on is having the courage to listen to your own inner voice. You call it a knowing.

You knew that you needed to make this shift for this moment in your life. You knew that it wouldn't be permanent but whatever came after wouldn't be the same necessarily. And it strikes such a knowing in me. I think my inner voice reading your words went, I know that.

I know what that is. And as I was reflecting on it and on this idea of craving and this idea of calling, it really struck me that you were talking about this immense craving or knowing, however you define it, of our primal selves. You know, that wildness of women, our wisdom that is so special in our circles. And I was thinking about how what it really is is your voice. Your inner voice can become the voice you use in the world. It's certainly a voice that, as someone looking in on your life, I have admired of yours.

And I started to wonder, you know, is trusting the knowing to finding the voice, which came with philanthropy as you talk about what found you, I wonder if that's our gendered knowing that we deserve truly equal footing, both in our home and out in the world. Because we have all of these ambitions and all of these things, even before we become parents. And then you become a parent and you look at a little girl and how could you not want her to have everything? Everything that was denied to you and everything that was given to you. Everything you know was denied to our grandmothers. You know, you want these little girls to have everything and more.

and I don't know I just couldn't help but see all this extra stuff in what you're talking about even as you so beautifully shared about what a life-altering moment this pregnancy and her birth and this whole journey was for you definitely and I think so often as women like as I say to all three of my now adult children I have a daughter a son and a daughter in that order you are enough. You're enough on the day you're born. You're enough. And yet I think as we go out into society, especially as women, we're told, well, that position is not for you. Or maybe you're not quite ready for that promotion. Or you don't see somebody. Maybe if you aspire, let's say, to be a governor of a state, you don't see very many others of them. Right? And so you wonder,

well, could I, if that's my aspiration, could I get there? Or if a young girl wants to be president, she's never seen a female president in the United States ever. And so I think we get all these messages from society, maybe somehow you're not quite enough to get that role or that position or do that thing or start that business. And that has, that really has animated my life. And that I think is what I learned through philanthropy as I started to go out and be out in these low-income countries and realize, because it's so obvious there, the stark contrasts between men and women and what women are literally not allowed to do what men can do. And so I kept thinking, oh, if we can, as a philanthropy community, make the world more equal for them. But it wasn't

until I turned the question back on myself and said, well, how far are we really here? in our country that I wanted to say, oh, my gosh, there's so much more work to be done in the United States, which is the highest income country in the world. And yet we are enough on the day we are born. And yet women and men don't have equality in our own country. And that, to me, just, it shouldn't be. And that calling of meeting other women who were asking me for things, as they just knew I was a U.S. citizen coming to listen, you know, in some way that philanthropy might help. That calling from those women really started to animate my life, both in terms of my foundation work, but also the work I wanted to do here in the United States. Yes. And now a

word from our sponsors who make this show possible. It's interesting you talk about that eventual moment. of having to look back at where you live. I feel like I've had so many of the, you know, in my own way, which is not nearly as large and global as yours, but in using this career and platform as I can, so many of the same journeys, traveling all around the world, wanting to fix what appear to be the greatest disparities. And then realizing how great the disparities are in our own backyard, and how they're just a little bit better masked, but they're everywhere.

And when you realize that it's just the United States in Papua New Guinea that don't have any guaranteed paid leave, and you start to realize, well, that's part of the reason the women don't become the CEO or the president, because we're told if we do start a family, it'll take us out of work. But it shouldn't. Men and women both deserve the opportunity to be at home

with their new expanding families and then to return to the workplace and other countries and other systems have designed for that and we simply haven't invested in certainly in women but we actually haven't invested in families well at all and so when did that light bulb occur for you know when eventually you decided to start the foundation you had these young kids and it it came quicker than you wanted it to, which I love that you talk about in the book, being like, I don't mean to be ungrateful, but does this have to happen now? Because I think no matter what we worry that we're doing the wrong thing, we always want to do all the things, but you can only, you know, spend so many plates at once,

when did the paid leave issue really strike you as, oh, this has to be one of the drums we beat consistently and talk about everywhere we go? Well, as I was traveling on behalf of the foundation, I would also go to many other high-income countries because we were trying to get their governments to, you know, some of the work that we were doing as a foundation. It's really up to governments to scale it up. And so as I would be out in the UK or in France or in Germany, and women would talk about their work and their child rearing. And I was seeing how they would talk. about gender, but then when I would also go to the Nordic countries to Norway and Sweden, and I started talking to men, and they're like, we can't believe you all don't have paid family medical leave. And I would interview them and I'd say, well, well, okay, do you take time off? And they're like, well, of course we take time off. Why wouldn't we want to be with our new child, our son or our daughter? And as I started to study and learn and realize, okay, what are the two,

two biggest barriers that hold women back. It's harassment and abuse on a continuum and paid family medical leave. And when you look, when you talk to people in Sweden and Norway and you realize they've had their policy for so long, it's a given that it changed the norm in society. Like, norms are hard to change. But men literally say, no, no, no, I'm not taking it because I don't want to leave money on the table. Like, that might have been why men first started to take it. But now it's because I want to be part of the child rearing. It just became the norm. And so that's when I started to realize, wow, and that was somewhere around maybe 2014 that this needed to change in the United States. This makes absolutely no sense. We have these gendered roles that we just expect

somehow women will work and take care of the kids, right? And it doesn't work. I've talked to women all over the U.S., you know, in the south, in the north, in the east, in the west, and women will say, like, I don't know where to leave my child. Like, if I don't have a parent to leave them with and I need to work, if it's a single mom, or when it comes down to my child is sick, who's going to take them to the pediatrician? I'm the one that's expected to, and yet there's a penalty at work for doing that. You just realize we just, we haven't advanced, like some of these other societies have, particularly in the Nordic region, but all over the world that people are doing paid family

medical leave. Absolutely. And what that does is it actually, it's not just a disservice to these new families, it's a disservice to our society. Because you see, and I so appreciate that you talk about these truths so often when you're working around the world, because I think everybody needs to hear them and they need to hear them regularly, to your point, so we can change habits or norms. When women, but families are supported, countries do better economically. Right. They become, not only do their GDPs increase, they become more technologically innovative. They become places where new ideas are born and where leaps in terms of human growth happen. And so really when you invest in taking care of families, you build a better world.

It's not just a moral issue. It's also a mathematical one. It's an economic one. And I think where the math and the morals meet should always be the zone we're aiming for, right? Definitely. And because we do have to realize that women are, by and large, around the world, the center of the family. And if she does well, her children have a better chance and the family has a better chance of thriving. If she's not doing well, the converse is true. The children are less likely to thrive, right?

Yeah. And so that's why I always say we need to lift women up, just remove the barriers that hold them down and do what we can to lift them up because they lift up everybody else. And you're absolutely right. Then it comes down to economics. It has a ripple effect throughout society. Absolutely. And has learning so much of this, because I'll tell you, anytime I get a nugget of information like that, you know, there's some white paper or some great new piece of research from a Nordic country, as you say, comes out, it makes me feel so gleeful because it reinforces the knowing, the knowing that we deserve the support can now also be proven. And I guess I wonder, as someone who holds such great knowing, does that kind of make you reflect on where some of that expectation around women and even personally for you, that guilt spiral that you talked about in trying to balance launching the foundation and having three young

kids, how that spiral kind of becomes like a ninja star, if you will? Because every woman I know who has a family or runs a company or has a busy life or is working two jobs you know any fill in the blank feels like no matter what choice they're making it might be the wrong one and you said something in your book about this guilt spiral that is so common for us i wrote it in all caps in my notebook that guilt is an indulgence and that realizing that changed everything for you because it made you realize guilt is, guilt is focused on me, on us. And you're trying to focus out around you. I would imagine it feels doubly, triply, quadruply true with all this data. But when you look back at when you realize that, that aha moment, can you talk

a little bit about that where it came from and how it had a ripple effect for you personally in your life. Sure. I finally, when my kids were about middle school age, learned this concept that had been come forward by a psychologist in the UK about good enough parenting. And the concept of good enough parenting, they've gone out and collected a lot of data over time that one good enough parents and kids thrive. They just need one good enough adult. And sometimes it's not even the parents. Let's say both parents are struggling with something, right, and balancing a lot. If they can have a coach who believes in them, they can have a teacher who believes in the, but that consistent nurturing of the child, then the child has the ability to thrive.

And once I could ask myself, I was so caught up in this indulgence, as you say, of the perfect parent, whatever the notion of the perfect parent is. It was some form, I think, of my mom who didn't work when I was younger. She worked more when I was older. But, you know, the be there all the time, you know, that, that notion just isn't, isn't right. Like, there is no such thing. There's all kinds of parenting in the world, right? And kids thrive in different ways. And so it was more saying to myself, you know, going to my journal and saying, hmm, am I a good enough parent? Am I good enough? And I could start to answer the question. I wrote down a few things I was I'm like, by gosh, I am a good enough parent. So guess what? My kids are going to thrive. And so

I could let down the pressure on myself of perfectionism and on them. It just kind of took the whole pressure level down in the household. And I could be like, yeah, they're going to turn out okay. Like, I'm not going to get everything, right, you know? But that's okay too. My mom didn't get everything right, right? But she got enough of it. right, that, you know, we forthrived as children. Yeah. And to your point, what a great thing to teach your children that they have a village, that their coach is someone they can look up to, that their auntie is someone they can always call with a problem, that their mentor at their internship or their summer job is worth

listening to. What it strikes me as is a wonderful way to build an emotionally intelligent, communicative and resilient child. Definitely. And I think you can also teach them what I learned later was also when they were more in the high school ages. You're also teaching them rupture and repair. Like maybe you had intended to get to that activity after school, you know, and they're on the field. But oops, you got stuck in traffic or you got stuck on a phone call and you arrived late and you missed the goal or you missed the thing that they were, you know, there to do. okay, or maybe there's a day, I certainly had days where I lost my temper and I wished I hadn't. Sure.

But going back and apologizing, like taking responsibility and then changing your actions in the future, you can teach your kids rupture and repair. Yes, I ruptured. I raised my voice at you because I was stressed about something else, but that's no excuse. Like, I take responsibility. And so what it teaches them, because the truth is. truth is in any healthy relationship, a friendship, an intimate partner relationship, a work colleague, there will be rupture and repair. But it's really how you do the repair. And that was another concept. I was like, oh, it's okay. Like, it's okay. And I'll teach them

something just by being me and being real about the relationship and my faults and my mistakes. Exactly. And I think it's such a healthier modality and maybe strikes me as, you know, such a personal point of excitement because I too am a recovering perfectionist. And the thing that undid it for me, you know, in the way that you talk about this idea that guilt is an indulgence being so revelatory, the thing that was the big sort of thought bomb for me was when a friend said, don't you understand? how toxic perfectionism is perfect doesn't exist so if you've been raised or cultured to be a perfectionist you've actually been raised to believe you're a failure and i was like oh my god this this thing rather than just being a human who does great on some days and not so great on others and who tries to be a good sum total of their parts this idea that if you're not perfect, you're failing, really just sets us up for failure. So what a gorgeous, more, just more human way to live to be a real person trying their best. That's right. A real person in the world.

And you're going to stumble and fall some days. You're going to be tired. You might be a little grouchy. But, you know, on the next day you get up, you might be kind of another version of your best self. And it's okay because it also gives other people permission to be their full. self. Like, as I've said to my kids many times, and so my mother said it to me, which is all emotions are okay. All of them. Fear, anger, you know, even all the ones you would think of as negative emotions and all the positive emotions, all emotions are okay. It's what you do with them. And so, you know, and it's also that, okay, so maybe you were in anxious one day and so you weren't your nicest self. Again, you can go back and repair with that person or just say,

I'm so sorry, I was having a bad day. And it gives them permission later to have a bad day, right? Yeah. And to not have it feel so final. Yeah. Nothing has to be such a catastrophe. Even your worst day is something that, you know, a year from now you're going to reflect on and realize it taught you something. And it's just kind of a blip on the radar. And I think that's, that's that resiliency um and on the subject of resilience and let me preface the question by saying listen if anybody gets not wanting you know a divorce or a man to be your identity as an individual or a woman it is me um i i i guess i'm curious because you've you've spoken about this i think really eloquently and beautifully for someone who i'm sure has been bombarded with less than eloquent and

beautiful questions on the subject of that sort of rip and then a personal repair, if you will. What has struck me, having gone through it a little more recently than you, and I've decided to look up all the women I admire have been through it and say, like, what have you said that will give me some guidance here that I can read it to in the morning? You've spoken really beautifully about how you wanted to thoughtfully reflect on this because you are a public figure. There's just no way not to. I feel that.

For me, what it came down to was, oh, I have to admit, I think I've made a mistake. There are certain things I don't want to model for the children I know I want to be a mother to. And I know that can be a very, shattering experience for women who go through it in the same kind of time period that I did. And I really, I thought so much about your story and about other women I know who have experienced

that kind of shift or transition in that later stage. You know, and for you, you were married for 27 years. You did raise all these babies together. Obviously, you did some gorgeous things together. You launched one of the world's most beautiful. and accomplished philanthropic foundations that you ran and you advocated as this sort of superwoman in my eyes and all my friends who, you know,

when we got started, we're like, yeah, we'll go to that conference, yeah, we'll get on that plane, sure, we'll show up at this place. Yeah, you wanna go bug everybody in Congress, let's go. Let's stage a protest in Washington. Like, we didn't know what we were doing, but we looked at people like you and said, well, look, it's possible. And I guess I just wonder, and it doesn't have to be a long answer. I realize I've been rambling about this for a long time because I've thought a lot about it clearly.

But for you, knowing that your story and your example can actually be a gift in terms of resiliency. And I don't mean about even the kids or your ex or anyone but you, the woman, Melinda, who if you'd gone through this privately in another life, you wouldn't have to talk about it out in the world. Is there like, is there a nugget of wisdom or an aha moment you had that made you know that even though the world would be watching, which is why so many people stay, that made you know that you deserved to choose yourself, that you deserved to carve a new path, that you deserved, especially as the mother of girls to say, I want something different, deeper, better for this next phase in my life. Because I know there's a lot of women that would give anything for that knowing to come to them when they're in the moment of do I stay or do I go. Yeah. And one thing I would say to anybody going through this, look, it's just painful. And the knowing comes and you might push it away for a while. So I will tell you the knowing came. No, no, no, I can make this work. No one came. No, I can make this work. knowing came make so that is at least for me that was a normal part of the process but at least for me in the end I had to look you know when you point your finger at somebody else they say you have

to look at the three fingers pointing back at yourself right yes you know yes and I realized there had been some problems but it but ultimately if I was pointing the finger at that person saying you betrayed me I had to look at my three fingers pointing back at myself and saying, I'm betraying myself and who I am if I stay. I have certain values. And if I cannot live those values out in this relationship of who I am and what I believe that I'm betraying myself. And I thought, how horrible is that? Do I want to betray myself? Yeah. No. And so that helped me have the courage to eventually do what I did. And the other thing I say to people who, you know, some people will come and talk to me who are, you know, contemplating at a divorce and

I'll say, look, it is not easy. And, you know, I wouldn't wish it on any family. But I will tell you when it's over and, you know, and you go through a period of healing, you don't know what it is. I don't know what it is. But something beautiful will grow on the other side. So by letting go of something you may not know what you're going to, and you may not even know it for a few years, but something beautiful will come on the other side. And you will know yourself even better, and you'll be more resilient for whatever the next big change in life is that comes. Yeah. Yeah. I think if you can get over the fear of the unknown, you can actually wind up discovering the joy of the unexpected that's on the other side of it.

Definitely. Most definitely. And you just have to have the courage to say, I may not know what's coming next, but okay, out there somewhere is something. And then, but you learn from that courage. It's just like when we teach our kids, let's say they have to step into a new friendship or a new classroom or a new situation. Where is their self-esteem built and where's their resilience built by actually taking that sense? step. That's how they come to know what they're capable of and what's inside of them. And so it's the same way for us as women or men, no matter what age we are. We still have to have the courage to take that hard or that uncomfortable step, no matter what. Yeah. I just think it's really beautiful. Thank you. And now a word from our sponsors. Did you have certain self-care practices because you knew the world would be paying attention? Like, did you just delete everything off your phone? Did you just lock your phone in a safe?

Like, I had a couple of days where I was like, I need to leave the house, and I need to leave any electronic tether here, and I need to just be outside. You know, and then the next day I was like, maybe I need to just power the thing off, but have the music, because the music helps on the walk. Like, I really, it was, it was sort of like doing a paint by numbers when the numbers have been erased. What were your sort of tools for your own self-care? I had developed a lot of tools for self-care in that in-between space, you know, where once you have made the decision that you need to leave, but then there's, you know, a time before it can be actually happen and be executed, right? I'd imagine also, especially at the echelon of life. global foundation. I can't even imagine the complexity. The paperwork nearly killed me. I can't, I can't fathom it for you. So just hats off that you've made it to the other side and you haven't,

you're not in the corner like eating your own hair. I'm amazed. There are a few days I could have done that. But look, I was lucky enough to be surrounded by an amazing tiny team of people helping me, right? But I had to learn self-care during that in-between time where I didn't know when the divorce would get announced, how it would all get split up, what was to come. That's when I developed all my self-care techniques. And those included, you know, walking with a friend at a moment's notice, walking with a friend, some friends on a routine basis. I talk about therapy in the book, which I never expected to write about. And I was a skeptical of therapy. But talking to my therapist, sometimes I just needed to reach out to friends who had no idea that I was even

separated just to go have some fun. Or other times I was saying to somebody this morning, I would just listen to a book, a piece of fiction. And that would just take me away. But a lot being out in nature helped kind of just get me away from a very tense situation. So I had all those self-care tools then when it went public. And so to be honest, I had already gone through the hardest part behind the scenes. And so then it was just kind of like, okay, finally, it's out there, right? Yeah. And I didn't go look at my phone. My youngest daughter would show me a few things and I'd be like, okay, that's enough. Put it away. Go outside and, you know, sit by the lake, listen to some birds. I like to swing. We had a swing set in our yard back then, so I'd go swing.

Yeah. It is interesting, the little things, you know, as time would have it, my best friend in the world who is I mean she's my everything she's my business partner you know my my sister for all intents and purposes um we went through this at exactly the same time in exactly the same summer it was you know a wild time and out of the woodwork came so many other friends interestingly enough best friend from college one of my dearest friends from my activist space one of my friends you know, dealing with a spouse with addiction. Like, we had this sort of cocoon of women. And I remember on the day that I knew my news would go public. And I was like, oh, God. My best friend FaceTime from Detroit, one of my other friends came over. And we walked around the

house. We saged my whole house together, knowing we were on a countdown. I was like, okay, six more minutes. And we did this whole little ceremony together. And then we had a girlfriend who was refreshing the internet and the minute it hit she was like it's up we popped a bottle of champagne because they were like we're just going to reframe this for you this doesn't have to be a sad thing we're so proud of you and after that i i turned my phone on airplane mode and i literally put it away for three days it was a friday i was like i'll turn it back on on monday perfect anybody who really needs to talk to me can call my landline from 1996 and that'll be that and it was this sort of thing. And it was, to your point, the community of women, that village, that sisterhood,

they helped me take something that in the in-between had been so difficult and painful and scary. And they turned it into a moment where I got to celebrate my own courage. And it was so simple and so sweet. And that is the thing I come back to again and again for people like yourself or myself who can't go through private things privately. And I just think, well, if we can set that little example, if we can encourage another group of friends to pop a bottle of champagne for somebody, I'm in. And I think you said one other really important thing, which is to name internally what we are good at. And I think sometimes we don't see it. Like maybe you didn't see the courage, but your friends saw the courage. And so for your friends

to name that attribute in you and celebrate that attribute, I think as women, that's another really healthy thing that we can do. Yeah, I do too. I really do too. And it is the sort of thing that builds resiliency so that you can have touch points where you really connect to yourself in moments of joy or sorrow. You know, you talk in the third chapter of your book about such a heavy, experience that sadly I think when you get to a certain age we can all expect and you've lost a

dear friend I mean who was young you know 37 or 38 I believe you said your friend John and going through cancer and going through loss with someone it's a very surreal thing when when a friend your age passes away and you write about how you learned to grieve and how you were grieving in community and in friendship with, you know, his wife. And it's, it's so devastating, but it's so uplifting at the same time. You know, as a reader who's now been through this sort of shock in my own life, I just thought, wow, this is such a beautiful handbook in a way for how to experience something like this and come out of it, both having held your own grief. authentically, not, you know, turning your back on yourself or your experience, and realizing

how you can still claim the joy of what it was out of it. Is the lesson that you had at that time, now in hindsight, do you think that John has kind of continued to be a teacher for you in your life? For sure. Both in how he lived his life, you know, we were in a very rough and tumble tech industry in a pretty rough and tumble culture at Microsoft, right? A lot of sharp elbows. Creating amazing things. And we were, it was energetic and fun in a certain way. But it was tough. And so to see him live his life as himself, I mean, there wasn't a person that you'd go around. And you just knew who the good people were in the company. And he was one of them. He was celebrated for that and was himself. And so by

getting to write about him in this book, I think I've gotten to keep alive a bit who he was. And one of his three, he left, as I say in the book, three very young children behind, who I still know. And one of his daughters came to one of my book events, and I talked to her for a while afterwards. And she said, you know, Melinda, this has been so helpful. It's been cathartic for me to see how you saw my dad, because I didn't get to know him. I was little. I read about him. You know, my mom's told me stories, my aunts and uncles, but she said to hear how he was as a friend and then be able to share that with my friends, she said, or my therapist, or my community, they get to see my father in a different way than even as I've described him.

And that's so that's been a gift that I think still comes. Like he comes through those stories. But as I talk about in the book, what I learned was these concentric circles around the person who's in the center who is going through, let's say, a tough illness or potentially a death. You have to really understand which ring you are on relative to that person. Are you in the innermost ring? Are you family? Are you in the next ring of friendship? Are you two or three rings or four rings out? And what you do is you always provide comfort towards the center of those rings. Everybody who's the closest and that person. And you dump your grief to people who are on the outside of those rings further out. Right? So you don't take your issues. Because of course I was grieving as I knew we were going to lose him. But I'm not going to take that to him or to his wife, Emmy. Right. That's completely putting my issue on them.

I just want to be support to them, but I could grieve to my other friends who knew him but weren't as close to him, right? Yeah. It's something you can model reading about it. It's a lesson you can take with you. And I think that that is one of the marks of a beautiful book. And now a word from our wonderful sponsors. I want to pivot, which is a word I know you love, because I did this with Michelle Obama.

And you guys have really amazing, like, mentor, but also wonderful, approachable woman energy. And I loved reading about her in your book. And I want to just ask you, like, a quick, fun round of questions. And then I'll ask you my last and most excited or most precious. But when you talk about your friends, who's your girl crew? Who do you call? Who are your people? Who do you go on walks with? What does that world look like for you in your village? Well, I talk about these three women that I call my Truth Counsel. One of them is Charlotte Gaiman. I met her within the first three weeks of starting at Microsoft. Another one is Emmy Nielsen, who was the wife of the friend John, who I met at Microsoft who passed away. And another one is Killian No. And she moved to Seattle when her husband took a job in Seattle. And she literally left an entire organization that she started in Washington, D.C., and restarted here in Seattle. And so they are my Monday morning walking group. We text many, many, many times a week. I still am very, very close to my high

school, Mary Lehman. We met on the first day of high school, literally the first day. And she's somebody that, you know, I've reached out to in an emergency when I need something, or she's reached out when I'm really joyful or vice versa. She'll actually see my parents this weekend, Memorial Day weekend, when she's down near where they live as she goes to her nephew's graduation. So, yeah, those are some of my community. Yeah, I think about my high school girl text thread and, you know, my best girlfriends, like Nia, who I was telling you about.

Yeah. And it is these little crews of women, I think really become some of our building blocks of self. When you're not walking with them, when you're maybe going out for like a nice girls dinner, what's your drink of choice? Oh, gosh. For years, it was a lemon drop. And now I would say it's a Manhattan. Pretty much wherever I go, I order Manhattan. Very chic. I went through an old-fashioned phase. Oh, yeah. I loved when I'd order that at a bar, and a bartender would kind of raise his eyebrows at me,

and I'd be like, yeah, I've really done it. Look at me. What do you think is your dream meal? Oh, my dream meal is Mexican food. I grew up in Dallas and anything with guacamole and chips, be it a taco, be it enchiladas, just sign me up. I have a literal little parking lot hut taco place in L.A. Next time you're on the West Coast, I'm going to take it. Thank you. Okay, great. What is a place that you would love to visit if you could visit completely

anonymously just to wander around for a day? Oh, well, first of all, I can still go many places anonymously. It's wonderful. Yes, it's wonderful. That shocks me. And, oh, gosh, Sydney, Australia. It's just, it's a city I love to walk in. I love the nature there. I love the architecture. I like the people and the beaches. Yeah. That's so cool. Oh, I just love that. Okay. So I have another pivot for you, and this is a question about finance. What you're doing at pivotal ventures, the way that you are upending some of the venture capital world and investing in women really inspires me. Nia and I have been on a very similar journey, you know, doing a lot of philanthropic work together and petitioning for a lot of corporate social responsibility checks, we eventually came to a realization

and in the words of the late great Desmond Tutu, you can only pull people out of the river for long enough before you walk upstream and figure out who's pushing them in. And the push seems to come from inequity in the world, right? And if you want to change equality, you have to change the way money moves. And so we also work in venture now. And you are a North Star for us, the way that you work and what you all do. And I guess I just wonder for any young women who want to get into investing or who maybe are early in their careers in finance, what have you learned since you shifted your soul focus from being philanthropic into encompassing finance? And what advice would you give to women who really want to do well and do good? What I say to women who choose to do investing is invest in the things that are closest to you and that are proximal and that you feel like you can get your hands around and know.

So one of the things I do and I believe you do is I invest in, for instance, limited partners who invest in more women-led companies. Why do I do that? because so often women's businesses don't get capitalized, and yet they have an incredible lens, not a better lens, not a worse lens than men, just a different lens on society. And so some of the limited partners that I've invested in who've invested in others are, some of the businesses turn out to be around women's health care, like statewide in a whole state, holistic health for women, or have to do with mental health for people in the post. postpartum phase or maybe young people, teens going through mental health crisis or

eating disorders. It's just they have a different lens, even on caregiving, because more of them have now caregived for not just kids, but elderly parents. So I just say, you know, invest in people who are going to invest in everybody else and who have a different lens. Yes. And what I'm hearing you say goes back to that point about the math and the morals. Because they meet because if you are not investing in 51% of the economy, I always say you're missing out on 51% of their returns. Definitely. And so it feels really exciting to see people waking up to this and having this sort of aha moment out in that space. And I think it takes a bit of courage to invest in a different way. I mean, why do you see a lot of VCs investing in the same types

of businesses? It's because it's what they know or they've gotten used to. But so we're using some courage to invest in things we haven't seen get capitalized before. But one thing I do know about finance is people don't like to leave money on the table. So when this investment thesis is played out, give us, you know, it takes eight, 10 years, fine. I have a feeling you'll see a lot of other people crowding in because I agree. Why did I leave, you know, why didn't I look at that sector? I agree. It's the same way I feel about what we do at our fund.

we do a lot of work in Michigan because we're very passionate about the Midwest and a lot of people don't get it. And I'm like, do you really want to miss it out? I don't think so. And so it feels, it feels exciting to remind people of that. And gosh, I just, I think the whole lens of your world is exciting. All of it is motivating. I know for me and for so many, you know, of my friends who were all absolutely geeked that I was going to get to talk to you today. I'm going to ask you my favorite question to end an interview with, and someday I'll ask you the rest. When you look out at the rest of the year, your summer, which is about to hit, thankfully, and the way that you think about these next chapters that are coming, after having reflected on so many chapters

in your life, in your book, so beautifully, when you look forward, what feels like your work in progress? My work in progress on myself or in my company? Either, both, whatever strikes you. I think I'm always a work in progress. I hope I always am. But for me, I feel like I've learned to have courage and to trust other people a lot. So as my team brings forward ideas or as I see something new, I feel like I have much more the courage these days last 10 years to go explore whole new areas.

And so for me, that's just exciting. It goes back to that word, discover. What else can I discover? You know, what else should we be funding that we're not seeing right now? What is somebody else seeing that I'm not seeing? So for me, it's all about finding partners who have good ideas and making sure we fund them. Because to me, those are the force multipliers in life. And that just excites me, the sort of undiscovered yet, both in work and inside of myself of who I am, to me, that's always exciting.

You're an explorer. Yeah, I guess so. I love it. I love it. Being a modern-day explorer feels right. Thank you. Yeah. Thank you so much. Thank you for sharing, you know, your thoughts, reflections, not only in the book, but on the show today. It's just been an absolute joy. Well, thank you so much for having me and for all you're doing through your activism and your investing. I just really admire it too. So back at you. You paved the way for us. So thank you so much for giving us an example.

Many of us didn't grow up with it at home, so it really has been incredibly meaningful to, you know, be out in the world and always get to see what you're up to. Thank you. Thank you so much. Bye-bye. This is an I-Heart podcast. Thank you.