The Truth About Melinda Gates

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We all know the old saying "behind every successful man there is a strong woman." And until the couple recently announced the end of their 27-year marriage, the strong woman behind Microsoft's billionaire founder Bill Gates had been his wife, Melinda Gates.

During their marriage, Melinda not only stood by and supported her workaholic husband and raised their three children, but earned her own reputation as a philanthropist and advocate for the rights and well-being of women and children, especially in the developing world, according to the Independent. Although Bill shared her interest in charitable giving and the two value the same causes, leading them to found and operate the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation together, it was she who threw herself wholeheartedly into philanthropic work, raising awareness for causes ranging from mitigating malaria across the globe to promoting the rights of women here in the U.S., according to NPR.

We don't know what happened to Bill and Melinda Gates' marriage — and curious as we are, it's none of our business. What we do know is Melinda Gates is an accomplished person in her own right who's well worth knowing about.

The decision to marry a person is one of the biggest and most important choices you'll ever make, so it's wise to reflect on it carefully before you pop the question (or accept a proposal). Melinda Gates knows this well, as she got an accidental view of how seriously Bill Gates took his decision to marry her. According to CNBC Make It, the couple, who had met at Microsoft, had been dating for about a year, and Bill realized it was time for a decision. "We cared a lot for each other and there were only two possibilities: either we were going to break up or we were going to get married," he said.

But instead of taking a walk to think it over or calling up a friend to discuss it, Bill used another decision-making tactic. He set up a whiteboard in his bedroom and started writing down all the pros and cons of marrying Melinda — just as Melinda walked in and saw what he was doing. It's not known exactly what he wrote on that whiteboard, but it's a safe bet that on that day, the pros outnumbered the cons.

Melinda Gates' passion for philanthropy was born in part by tragedy. At her "wedding shower" in 1993, her terminally ill mother, understanding the enormous fortune her daughter would soon marry into, read her a serious letter. According to the Independent, it read in part, "From those to whom much is given, much is expected."

Her mother died a few months later, but her words stayed with Melinda. This advice inspired the creation of the William H. Gates Foundation, which was run by Bill Gates' father and dedicated to putting laptops in schools. But after reading about how millions of children were dying of diseases, such as malaria and tuberculosis, in the developing world, she shifted her philanthropic focus to world poverty. The current Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation grew from this concern, and today has 1,600 staff members and distributes $5 billion in grants to 135 counties around the world each year, according to The New York Times.

Although she's led a privileged life as the wife of a billionaire, Melinda Gates has made supporting the underprivileged — especially women and children  — a central concern in her life, according to NPR. And her concern for the less fortunate is not just lip service. She's not one to just cut a few checks, attend a few charity balls a year, and call it a day.

As if co-directing the high-profile, multi-billion-dollar Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation weren't enough work, Melinda Gates also founded Pivotal Ventures, which its website calls "an investment and incubation company created by Melinda French Gates to advance social progress in the United States." In practice, this means Pivotal Ventures invests in and supports initiatives and people who work towards greater equity and access to opportunity for underserved groups. As an example, Pivotal Ventures recently co-organized the $40 million Equality Can't Wait Challenge, which awards grants to promising leaders who are women of color to enable them to "make decisions, control resources, and shape policies and perspectives."

Melinda Gates' philanthropic efforts aren't limited to the organizations she runs. Rather, she has been active in a broad range of endeavors, sitting on the board of directors of both for-profit and not-for-profit organizations. This has allowed her to expand her influence, apply her business skills to new challenges, and give back to causes meaningful to her.

Among the organizations benefitting from her expertise were her alma mater, Duke University, whose board of trustees she joined in 1996, according to a press release put out by Duke. She also served on the board of directors of Drugstore.com, according to the company's website. In addition, she sat on the board of directors for The Washington Post from 2004 until 2010, according to the Washington Business Journal. These weren't purely symbolic positions, either, and her experience and skill set were much appreciated. "With her knowledge of technology, education and media, Melinda Gates has been a uniquely wonderful board member, taking time out of one of the world's busiest and most impressive lives to help our company," Washington Post's CEO Donald Graham said.

Melinda Gates is probably best-known for her philanthropic efforts on behalf of women and children in the developing world. But as she told NPR, during her travels abroad, she had an important realization: Even in the U.S., women do a lot of invisible, uncompensated work and see their efforts constantly ignored or undervalued. This is why she founded an organization separate from the Gates Foundation, Pivotal Ventures, to promote efforts supporting women in the U.S.

As an example of the invisible burden many women bear, she recounted to NPR how she got her then-husband, Bill Gates, to take over the chore of driving their children to school on some days. Soon after, she started noticing something unusual at the school entrance: a lot more men dropping off their kids. Apparently, as she heard from parents, other moms had seen Bill dropping off his kids, then went home and gave their husbands a challenge: If Bill Gates can take his kids to school, why can't you? "The reason I wrote that specific story [is that it's] an example of this unpaid labor that women do all over the world," Melinda explained.

With a net worth close to $70 billion, according to Celebrity Net Worth, Melinda Gates has more cash than any person could possibly spend in a lifetime. And she's chosen not to spend it all on herself, instead directing it to charitable causes around the world through both the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and Pivotal Ventures, her other advocacy organization. The Gates Foundation alone has an endowment of over $50 billion, according to The New York Times, and disburses $5 billion in grants annually.

But Gates doesn't just bring money to the table — she brings clout. Besides being a generous donor, she's proven to have a knack for coaxing others to open their wallets for worthy causes as well. In 2006, she spearheaded a campaign to raise $300,000 for Seattle Children's Hospital to fund research and facility improvements and to care for patients unable to pay, according to a press release from the hospital. How effective was she in this effort? By the time the campaign was publicly announced, Gates and her team had already managed to raise $200 million.

Melinda Gates has enough money that she could just give any worthwhile organization a blank check and consider her work done. And while this would no doubt do a lot a good, Gates feels there is an even more effective way to support beneficial projects around the world — get other caring people and organizations on board to help, as Britannica reported.

Thus, despite its vast resources, the Gates Foundation does not singlehandedly fund any programs, no matter how worthy or urgent they may be. Instead, the foundation enlists other people and organizations, including companies, other non-profits, and sometimes governments, to help fund the programs the foundation supports. Gates has both philosophical and practical reasons for this approach. First, this multiples the Gates Foundation's impact — their investments are multiplied by the contributions of others. Second, getting others on board raises the profile of the causes they support and increases the impact they can make. As Britannica noted, the philosophy behind this strategy can be summed up in an old African proverb that Melinda has shared: "If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go with others."