The Interview - Melinda French Gates Is Ready to Take Sides

Episode Date: July 28, 2024

The billionaire philanthropist is turning 60, striking out on her own and getting political.

From The New York Times, this is The Interview. I'm Lulu Garcia Navarro. I have a lot of female friends who are in the midst of midlife reinventions. Divorce, job changes, aging, navigating, all of that, as you can imagine, is hard. Doing it in the glare of the public eye, even with buckets of money, has its own unique challenges. Which is why I was so intrigued when one half of one of the most powerful philanthropic couples in the world announced a few months ago that she was striking out on her own. In May, Melinda French Gates said that she was leaving the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation,

which she co-founded in 2000. Despite a divorce from Bill a few years ago, the two had continued working together. And it was understood that Melinda was a crucial part of what made that foundation so effective. It's hard to overstate what an earthquake her departure was in the world of big donor charitable giving. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, soon to be called just the Gates Foundation, is the largest philanthropic organization in the United States by far, and it's given away nearly $80 billion since its inception. With help from fellow billionaire Warren Buffett, the Gateses have wielded enormous influence through their charitable donations

to causes as varied as their much lauded global childhood vaccination initiative to their more controversial push to change standards for public education here in the United States. The act of walking away from all that would have been surprising enough. But then Melinda did something she had never done while at the Gates Foundation. She entered the political fray, endorsing President Biden and saying that she was going to focus her resources on supporting women's rights in the United States, including abortion rights. When we spoke earlier this month, she told me why she feels so much urgency to get involved in these issues now. I should say this was before Biden dropped out of the presidential race. She's since endorsed Kamala Harris.

We also talked about life after divorce, raising rich kids, her new YouTube series called Moments That Make Us, and her evolving views on how to use her own money. Here's my conversation with Melinda French-Gates. Melinda, you are in this big moment of transition. You've been through a divorce. You're about to turn 60. You've left the Gates Foundation after over two decades.

Has it felt like a big identity shift? Not really, because I am still the same person that I was when I was at the foundation. I'm still doing the work on behalf of women and girls. And it was a decision that I gave a lot of careful thought and reflection when I was making it. So while you're doing that, I think I had to get a bit used to the idea the last few months. And it's certainly the transition itself had some sad moments. It's hard to say goodbye to employees who I love and care about deeply. But it's also had some uplifting moments. You know, people stop and tell you what they really think about you and you tell them what you think about them. So it hasn't felt like an identity shift in any

way. What did people tell you? Was there anything that surprised you, moved you, upset you? Hearing about my impact on people's pivotal moments in their career or in a decision we were making, those were ones that I would say touched me very deeply. Speaking of pivotal, you have got your own organization, Pivotal Ventures, which you started in 2015. And you're doing this new interview series that will go up on YouTube where you talk with sort of famous and important women in different decades of their lives from their 30s to their 80s. All these things coming together in this moment, how are you trying to define yourself and your work now? What's connecting all these new endeavors?

Well, I would say that it's really my passion to make the world better on behalf of others, and in particularly women and girls and minorities. And I just, over the years, came to really learn, you know, we have to invest in women and girls and others because we send people, young people, out into society that wasn't built for them. And in my 60th birthday interviews, I wanted to bring these women into the conversation because they've been seminal to me in my thinking about these issues over years. And I thought there were things they could teach all of us. Tell me why. I mean, what resonated? Well, Billie Jean King, I watched her when I was nine

years old. I remember where I was when we watched her match. And to stop and think how far the world has come because of her courage and the courage of so many who followed her. It was joyful to sit with these women and to hear about their courageous moments, but also where they've found themselves now in life. I'm wondering when you realized that you could bring something as a woman into the world that might be different than maybe the male perspective. I would say I didn't come to that realization until about 2010. So I had been traveling by that time internationally for over a decade. And it was around 2010 that I just realized my perspective as a woman and as a mother and the things that women were willing to tell me when I would go out on these field visits and I would be out in a village or, you know, in a township. When the men had left the conversation to go back to the fields, boy, what I heard from women was just unbelievable, really about their lives and how they were struggling to make ends meet, put food on the table, the difference a contraceptive made if they could space the births of their children,

how it was actually a crisis for them at times if they had another child that they couldn't feed. And it animated me and I realized, my gosh, if they're willing to have these courageous conversations with me, I need to bring that deeply into the work. I'm wondering when you sat there in 2010, you'd just been in the field and you're sitting there listening to women tell you their stories. And I've been in similar situations as a journalist and a former foreign correspondent where all of a sudden you're getting a perspective that perhaps hadn't been given before. How do you change the course of a ship, right? Because the Gates Foundation was known for being very science-based, very sort of looking for very clear, what am I saying here? Metrics, data.

Metrics, data. And not to say that women's issues can't be measured in that way, but it is different, isn't it? It is different. And I had to realize and get the foundation to realize that we didn't have much data as a world on women, which was shocking when I started to look into it. And so I had to set the foundation and our partners off in a direction to start collecting data because we did need it to know how to invest properly. But to put a stake in the ground, to turn us as a foundation,

I first did an article in Science magazine to say to the foundation, we are turning in this direction. And then I knew it was going to take some time and I would have to be patient and make sure we hired the right people, found the right president to run this, started to move resources into it. And it took us quite honestly, a decade. Just to put this into context, the foundation was or or is rather, the second largest philanthropic foundation in the world. It's given away almost $80 billion. It has an endowment that's $75 billion, bigger than the

GDP of some countries. What is it that you understood that a foundation of the size of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation could do? I understood that when we headed in a certain direction, for instance, vaccines early in our work, we thought it would save children's lives. We were able to prove that it did. And many, many others went in that direction with us. So I knew that if I put a stake in the ground around women and girls,

I was making a statement, a strong statement that we're headed in this direction. And I knew that we would bring data and rigor and science to it. And I knew others would follow us. Who did you have to convince? Was it Bill? Or was it also the board? I mean, who? I imagine it must have been Bill first. And what was that conversation like? that was with good data, with good backing from other people, but it also the leadership of the foundation. I remember one male scientist who I respected greatly, and he respected me. He was in the agricultural division. And when he retired, he said to me, Melinda, the first time you said out loud on stage that we needed to think about women in our agricultural work and what beans they would want to cook and grow. He said, I thought it was a joke. And he said, but over my career, I came to see that they will only cook certain beans because it takes a certain amount of time to cook them. They're the ones who do the unpaid labor. And he said, but I didn't really see it until I sent my two daughters out into the workforce. And I've seen it a lot with men over and over again that until they have daughters or someone in their family that really hits these barriers, they often are not convincible or until you have incredibly good data.

You've mentioned vaccines. You've mentioned all these initiatives towards women. There was, of course, some criticism for some of the swings that the foundation did take, especially for the work you did on K through 12 education in America. You know, you poured money into the Common Core Initiative, which many argue didn't work. Critics said that that was undemocratic, the big push to try and change an entire system of education in this country. I don't want to relitigate it. I am curious, though, as you're talking, how your thinking has evolved about using the power of philanthropy to do good and enact priorities. Look, we always have to be humble because as Warren Buffett says, you are taking on some of the hardest problems in society, the ones that society has left behind because they

are hard. And so I think the lesson in that is that you have to, though, bring people along with you. And I think some of the mistakes made along the way were ones of not thinking about, but what is the community asking us for? What are they saying they need? And what will they accept, right, both abroad and in the United States? And fundamentally, I will still say I absolutely believe that every child in the United States and quite frankly around the world deserves a great education. It is the thing that will change their life. So you still believe in the big swings? Absolutely.

Have you thought about the manner of giving? Because as you know, there is this debate in philanthropy right now about how money should be dispersed. As we mentioned, the Gates Foundation is known for one sort of way of doing that, which is data-driven. It's known as strategic philanthropy. And I'm wondering about the second model, because that's called trust-based philanthropy. And basically, you give money to organizations closest to the issues that you care about, no strings attached. And I'm curious, are you moving also in that direction? I'm probably somewhere a little bit more in the middle of that, still leaning towards data-driven, but certainly a little bit more in the trust-based model because I don't intend to build up a large organization. And I do believe that there are many, many partners on the ground, and I know there are,

I've met them, and I don't think I know all of them, who do incredible work but often don't get funded. And I feel like this work, when done closer to the ground, sometimes can have an even larger lasting impact. There is, of course, another famous female philanthropy, Mackenzie Scott, who is the ex-wife of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos. She's been taking the trust-based approach for quite some time. You were working with her for a while. Why did that stop? Well, let me say this. Mackenzie and I are definitely friends. And so I'm not going to say a lot about her or her philanthropy. I have great respect, huge respect for what she's doing. I think you make a false assumption to think that we may not work together more in the future.

So let's just wait and see. I mean, look, we talk about our philanthropy. She's very proud of what she's doing, and I think she should be. I'm proud of what I'm doing, and I think there may be more intersections in the future, but we'll see. It just depends on where she decides she wants to go and where I decide I want to go. But she certainly has had an effect on me in philanthropy, and I hope I've had an effect on her. Do you think women give differently? I think we haven't run the experiment fully yet. Interesting. What do you mean?

Because it's only been in the last, you know, decade that you're seeing women really come into their own in philanthropy. I mean, we have, you know, 100 years of history in philanthropy before that, but it was really the men who controlled the resources. And I even see it still with couples who are married, quite honestly, some of the women talk about, they still have to go to their husband to get the permission to do certain things they want to do in philanthropy. So give us another 25 years and then ask me the question again. Then I think we will know, do women give differently or not? I think we're just at the beginning of understanding that. The sample size you're saying is too small. Yes. I mean, both you and Mackenzie Scott are giving in ways that aren't necessarily contingent on your names being emblazoned on the side of a building, which is, you know, what we which happened with you and Bill, helps bring awareness to causes, helps, I think, increase trust because you know who the person is behind the organization. But there's also this other argument that anonymity or more low-profile giving keeps the focus on the work.

So how do you think about that balance? For me personally, I don't need my name on the side of a building in perpetuity. That's not what I'm about. I'm about how do I move society forward for the betterment of everybody? And so that, you know, my grandchildren and my grandchildren's grandchildren get to live in an even better world than I do now. But it doesn't take my name on a building to change society, nor do I actually think it's helpful. Not helpful why? Well, I'll give you a specific example. When our kids were very young, I finally went to Bill and we had this conversation that he readily agreed to.

And I said, you know, universities come to us and if we do a large gift because we want to, it seems to make sense in the area that we're working in, they want us to put our name on a building. I don't think that's a good idea because for our children going to those institutions, they don't want to go sit in a building that has their parents' name on it. Thank goodness we did that because literally one of my kids wouldn't look at a university that had any name on a building from us because they want to cut their own path in life. I think it's a sign that you've got good kids because I know I think some kids who might be like, yeah, mom and dad have their name on the side of the building and that's going to make me the big person on campus. And you know what? I went to school with some of those kids at Duke University, and I vowed to myself that if I ever had resources at my disposal, those were not the children I wanted to raise. Really? You saw that at Duke and it stuck with you?

Sure. There was a set of kids, both in undergraduate and in business school, who were all about the name, right? You know, or the thing they had or the access to the whatever, I'll make it up, ski house, you know, or and I just thought, gosh, I hope I'm never the mom that has those kids that's bragging about the material things they have or the name they have. How do you ground kids not to become those people? Well, first of all, they had an allowance. So we absolutely did not just buy them things. And they either had to buy that with their allowance or put it on their

wish list that maybe they'd get it from their grandparents or us on their birthday or Christmas. We said to them from a very early age, you know, you really are not allowed to tell other people that we, you know, how we flew on this trip back and forth. Like, otherwise, it will separate you from other children. And so, I think it was much more of an upbringing like I grew up in a very middle-class household where, you know, money did dictate whether I got an extra pair of shoes that year or not, right? And I thought that was a good principle to have. And I have to say, again, Mackenzie was helpful to me in this. I could see a bit how she was parenting, and I knew we had quite similar philosophies, actually. We were close-ish, not as close then, but I knew she was trying to raise her kids literally just

down the street from me in essentially the same way. I know we only have a few minutes left, and I do want to ask you about this other new part of your life, which is post-divorce. You said recently in an interview that you're sort of enjoying this moment, and I wanted you to say more about that. What does that mean, Melinda French Gates, in this new era in your personal life? It just means I get to be around the people I want to be around and do the things that I want to do. And it's lovely. So I just had no idea that it would be such an opening, right? An opening to be closer to my kids and the way I want to be.

You know, you are, I am stripped of some, or free, I shouldn't say stripped, freed of some obligations, right? I'm not balancing two large extended families anymore. So it just gives me more time and I'm really enjoying it. I'm thinking about this next chapter for you. And you've become more political.

Did you have to think about the tradeoffs in making your positions clear, saying that you're going to actively support candidates? Because obviously at the Gates Foundation, that was never the way you all did business there because you were often in partnership with government entities like USAID. And so, you know, that is irrespective of the administration and taking political positions, I imagine, wouldn't have been well viewed. Can you just talk me through how you thought, OK knew I had to speak out in favor of women's rights. And if there was a candidate who is against women's rights and says terrible things about women, there is no way I could vote for that person. And I felt that that decision, because of all the downstream repercussions it has for maternal health, for Black women, for, you know, places, deserts where women can't even go now to get good maternal care in the United States, all the downstream effects that are coming and will continue to come from that decision are so severe. I thought, you know, if I really believe in women in our country and women's rights, I need to speak up because women are the ones that are going to make or break this election. And women in battleground states speaking

up for what they want for their rights and for our democracy, that's why I felt it was so important. But yes, it was a very, it was not a easy decision. I came too easily. I knew I would get attacked. But at the end of the day, I care so much about women's rights. What did you worry about when you were thinking, should I say this or should I not? I knew there would be people who were against it or would say, okay, now she's always in one camp. And that's not true. I've always been actually, the one thing I have always been is a centrist. I have voted Republican in some elections. I voted Democratic in others. And I think that will also be true going forward. So it was more just, it's because we're just we're so polarized as a nation, as we all know, that it's hard to even have a sane conversation or debate when you have a different point of view than somebody. So that's why.

One of those people, of course, who did come out and attack you is Elon Musk. I'm sure you saw a couple of weeks ago, Elon posted on X About You endorsing Biden, and he said that your political activism might be, quote, the downfall of Western civilization. I'm wondering if you have any comment on that. I thought it was silly. Did it upset you? Because... No. I mean, here's one thing that always has confounded me about society is I've just watched over the years, you know, we will ask tech leaders. I have seen tech leaders interviewed about their parenting style, a male who has spent, you know, 60 hours at his company that week. And I'm sure he's a fantastic CEO and has done a great job, maybe or maybe not in their company. But then they get asked about parenting questions and they spew all this stuff and you think something doesn't add up here. So some of these comments to

me are just kind of silly. I do want to ask you about Warren Buffett. He just made his new will public. Earlier, he had said he was going to give a huge amount of money to the Gates Foundation. And now that I think he's been coming to over time, and I was aware that he was making this decision. So I think this has just been, it's been a good evolution, I think, to his thinking on how he wants to do his giving. An evolution just in what way? So that he has his own priorities and his family has his own priorities? I think that's a question you should ask Warren, right? Sure. But I've got you.

But I don't want to put words in his mouth. But I think it's just it's been a coming to over time, right? Yeah. I mean, one of the things that I just find interesting about you and Warren and that relationship is that even though he's 30 some years older than you, I think of you and Bill and him as this one generation of billionaire activists with a particular and sort of quite traditional approach to philanthropy. And now there's like this other group of activists. I'm thinking of Elon Musk and Jack Dorsey and Peter Thiel. And maybe it's just personalities, but does it feel like a different era to you to see this generational shift among the super wealthy and how they see and use their place in the culture? Well, the people you just named have not been very philanthropic yet. They use their

voice and they use their megaphones, but I would not call those men philanthropists. Go look at their record of actually giving money to society. It's not big. So you put Bill and me and Warren in a class of philanthropists doing things in a certain way, but I don't think you can then say, okay, well, let's compare to this group over here who are non-philanthropists. Those are non-philanthropists, in my opinion. What do you think is at the root of people like you choosing to go one way and people like them choosing to do something else or not choosing to do anything at all? I think we've had that in society for a long time, that you have some wealthy people who choose to give their money back and some who don't. What we've tried to do with the Giving Pledge is to get people to sign on to commit to giving away half their wealth during their lifetime or afterwards. What I will say is that as I see, this was the first year we actually had the original

signatories of the Giving Pledge and the next generation, the generation who will inherit the wealth together in a room. And boy, when we put those two together, it was such an interesting conversation because yes, the younger people in the room are seeing society in a different way and are seeing issues that they want to further and to forward. And some of them are even saying to their parents, hey, give us the purse strings earlier so that we can do this and we can do it in a new way. And so I will be very excited to see how that plays out over time. After the break, I called Melinda back to ask more about going it alone. I'm just ready to do this. I have 25 years of experience. I know what I want to do

and I don't want to have to, you know, negotiate with somebody else. Like, will we go over here? Will we change over here? Will we change over there? I was just ready to be on my own. Hi, it's Melinda. Hi, it's Lulu. Hi, good to speak with you again. Good to speak with you too. So, who's challenged your thinking most on women's issues?

Oh gosh, probably my children. My youngest, Phoebe, had been pushing on me for quite some time to not just do reproductive rights globally, but also in the United States. She had toured a number of clinics down south about a year and a half ago, and she saw the maternal mortality crisis up close and personal in some southern states. And she said, Mom, there is so much need in our own country. That's really interesting. This is after Roe v. Wade fell, obviously. And what was it that moved you from that conversation? What was it that made you think that you needed to pivot? I started to learn more. So one of the things I do whenever I feel like, okay, something's staring me in the face, but do I

know enough? I felt like I needed to learn about what was going on in the space in the United States. Was it policy? Was it clinics themselves? Was it funding? Who's doing funding? And what I would say is I'm still learning in that space, but I always go out and talk to a set of experts. I'll talk to other philanthropists. And I will say, I also have a council, a small council of other friends. They will often say to me, oh, my son or daughter who's in their 30s thinks differently about that, Melinda. And so I'll ask a whole lot more questions. And then often they'll have their son or daughter send me a bunch of articles on something like, this is why we think about it this way. But the other thing I'll say is my daughter, Phoebe, led with another female gathering of people in New York, of philanthropists of her generation,

and put in front of them a number of reproductive rights organizations. And they raised about $30 million specifically for some of these organizations. And the organizations have said, we've never actually had direct contact with philanthropists, right? But there's so much need right now. And so I think it's really important to try and look at, okay, where are the holes? Where are the gaps? But also, how do we go upstream of that and try and fix the system for people? You know, we've talked a little bit about how to give. Are you interested in directly funding, for example, paying for women to go across state lines to get abortions? Or is it more about increasing access in rural communities to reproductive health.

I mean, in a world after the fall of Roe, what does direct action look like? Well, I think it's different, again, for different people. I think for me, it will be more about access and more about policy. How do we get the right policies in play? I mean, that's some of the work we have been able to do in the child care and the unpaid leave space. And also, we've done a fair bit of research to prove what do Americans actually want and what are they saying on both sides of the aisle? And then who are the players that are trying to push for the right kinds of policies? We've done this also

in the adolescent mental health space. We've done this also in the adolescent mental health space. How do you make sure that adolescents actually can get mental health services and will insurance cover that? And how do they have privacy in that? So I also look at sort of the upstream, like I'm always looking at how can we affect the most number of women's lives or even babies' lives so you don't end up with these downstream effects. You know, something you talked about in the first call was that shift of focus from abroad to home. And it's interesting that this particular issue came through your daughter. And I'm wondering if you wished you'd gotten involved sooner. Was there a missed window of opportunity, do you think?

No, I think there was really a shift with the Dobbs decision, a major shift. And so when that happened, I really was like, oh my gosh, there is work to do in the United States. I cannot believe we're at this place in this country to have a law on the books for 50 years. I cannot believe we would roll something like this back. What are we saying about women and women's decisions about their bodies, why would we put politics, why would we put government back in the middle of that? Are you kidding? That decision had been made. And my young niece who's in her teens or my daughters who are in their 20s, they've grown up with that law. You have a law in the books, and you don't really consider it, because a country that's moving forward, we would then roll back something? I'm hearing you talk with such passion

about this, and this was clearly such a pivotal moment for the country, for women in the country, and it's clearly been a catalyst to move you in your own direction and to take a stand by yourself. I don't know how to ask this in a way that isn't going to be weird, you can tell me that this is just a weird question. But I'm thinking about how we've talked about women standing on their own two feet, having their own autonomy, not having to stand next to somebody else. And you've spoken in the past about how you sometimes felt unseen and unheard when you were with Bill. And I'm curious about that sensation and then how that's changed now. Because being part of a couple can also feel strengthening, but it can also take away from your own accomplishments. We were equal partners at the foundation. And so my name is on the building. And when I walk

into the room the last, I would say, eight to 10 years, people know I'm standing for what I stand for and that it's me and me speaking. And government leaders would call for both of us at times or even me or even him. So it wasn't so much that, but there is a process by which you make decisions when you stand next to someone who's equal, right? And that isn't as easy when you're not still married, but it also sometimes wasn't easy even when we're married. And now, you know, I'm role modeling for society, which is, I believe women should have their full decision-making authority, their full authority over their resources, and they ought to make good policy. And so for me, it came down to, I'm just ready to do this. I have 25 years of experience.

I know what I want to do. And I don't want to have to, you know, negotiate with somebody else. Like, will we go over here? Will we change over there? I was just ready to be on my own. And I'm turning 60. So it's also kind of like, okay, if not now, when? And I always learned from my mom, you know, set your own agenda. I'm just ready to set my own agenda as my own person. That was Melinda French Gates. This conversation was produced by Wyatt Orme. It was edited by Alison Benedict.

Mixing by Afim Shapiro. Original music by Dan Powell and Marion Lozano. Photography by Devin Yalkin. Our senior booker is Priya Matthew. And Seth Kelly is our senior producer. Our executive producer is Alison Benedict. Thank you. If you like what you're hearing, follow or subscribe to The Interview wherever you get your podcasts. And to read or listen to any of our conversations, you can always go to nytimes.com slash the interview. Email us anytime at theinterview at nytimes.com. Next week, David speaks with actor Vince Vaughn. Talk about the R comedies in Hollywood. I feel like there's always these set of rules that get handed down like they come in stone that the executives follow. Generationally, they change, but their goal is not to get fired in my mind's eye, that they can defend why they greenlit something.

I'm Lulu Garcia Navarro, and this is The Interview from The New York Times.