Melinda French Gates says the Gates Foundation’s commitment to spend its entire $200 billion on global health by 2045 is ‘fantastic’: ‘The vast majority of resources were to go back to society’
Good morning! Bumble made new hires before a difficult gain, Penny Pritzker is swept away in the Harvard-Trump drama, and FortuneAlexa Mikhail reaches the French doors of Melinda on the gigantic news of the Gates Foundation.
– 20 years plan. For several months, I have been working alongside Fortune Editor -in -chief of Geoff Colvin on a set of features on the 25th anniversary of the Gates Foundation. We reported exclusively this morning that the Foundation, which spent $ 100 billion in its first 25 years, will double its spending at $ 200 billion over the next 20 years to combat the deadliest diseases in the world, will reduce maternal and children's deaths and facilitates poverty. After which, the foundation will spend its last dollar and closed its doors in 2045 – an unprecedented decision in the world of philanthropy.
To understand the radical implications of this decision, Colvin and I interviewed the two Gates, alongside more than 30 researchers, beneficiaries and external experts. I was also able to visit the efforts funded by the Gates in South Africa, testifying to programs in the field in the cantons outside Johannesburg and the CAP which investigate the causes of the five million children who die before their fifth anniversary, offer HIV prevention to young adults and register for participants in a phase III test with what could be the first new vacculosis of the world.
Melinda French Gates has played a central role in global health since the beginning of the century, when she co -founded and was co -chaired by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation for more than two decades before resigning in 2024 after his divorce from Bill Gates.
“It's a bit incredible to think about the progress made,” said French Gates in his offices in Kirkland, Washington, in February, when she was thinking about the 25th anniversary of the Foundation. In his role, French Gates has traveled around the world to learn more about the needs of children and families. Since then, she has defended vaccines to children in low -income and intermediate income countries, has spoken on the world scene the way in which family planning and contraceptives are the most important poverty reductions, and have taken the philanthropic advice from Warren Buffet, which contributed a large part of its wealth to the foundation.
Now outside looking, she said Fortune that it supports the massive announcement of $ 200 billion in the Foundation.
“I think it is a fantastic decision,” she said, noting that the plan has always been that the “vast majority of these resources were to return to society”. This commitment comes as reports find that investments in United States Africa for gender funds is struggling following the rhetoric of President Trump on Dei.
As for his current work, French Gates is more impatient than ever to “define a more age-to-day program in the United States”. Gates launched Pivotal Ventures in 2015 to focus on gender equality in the United States and puts all his resources. She recently published a memoir, where she discussed this work as well as her divorce.
“I saw the declines in this country, and I know that only 2% of philanthropy goes to organizations that work on gender,” she said. “It's time for me to intervene … I can use more easily and more flexibly all the tools of my toolbox.”
Last year, French Gates is $ 1 billion to support organizations and individuals raising gender equality and helping women enter their power. “I don't know, something to be 60 years ago. My mother says you get even more opinion, maybe because you have less time,” she said, laughing.
And what is it the most obstinate?
“I want this world to be better in the United States for my granddaughter than today. And at the moment, she has fewer rights than I had, and that simply should not be, “she said. “I absolutely make international subsidies, but the majority will be in the United States.”
In addition, French Gates has a message to the richest in the world about the need – and the moral imperative – to restore.
“If you are a billionaire in the United States, you have benefited from this country. You have benefited from good roads. You have probably benefited somewhere along the health sector,” she said. “People in other places do not have these things, and so yes, we owe something to society, and there are many ways to do it.”
Read my full interview with Melinda French Gates here and read the full story about the future of the Gates Foundation here.
Alexa Mikhail
alexa.mikhail@fortune.com
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