Melinda French Gates has spoken candidly about what it's like to be a billionaire, saying that with her enormous wealth comes “great responsibility.”
in Vanity Fair interviewThe ex-wife of Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates says her financial situation sometimes feels “surreal”.
“The hardest part is going out there and seeing the needs of the people there,” French Gates, 60, told the magazine. “You see how hard they are struggling to make ends meet. A single mother with a four-month-old baby whose mother has become ill. That's hard.”
French Gates, who has an estimated net worth of $11.3 billion, according to Forbes magazine, has been active in philanthropy for more than 20 years since founding the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation with her ex-husband in 2000.
“I wanted to use every tool in my toolbox,” she says, “philanthropic funds, investment funds, and the ability to have a say on policy. An LLC gives me a lot of flexibility to do that.”
The mother of three told the outlet that some of her personal wealth is donated to political campaigns.
In 2022, French Gates told CBS Mornings that other billionaires should follow his lead and donate some of their fortunes to causes they care about.
“If you're lucky enough to be a billionaire, trust me, giving away half of it won't change your life,” she said at the time. “If wealth is in your hands for whatever reason, you should use it to give back to society, to change yourself and to be a society that can help others.”
In May, French Gates announced she would leave the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, one of the world's largest private philanthropic foundations, to donate $1 billion over the next two years to support women's and family organizations.
She revealed that she plans to start her own charity.
Billionaire backers Breaking up The couple will divorce in 2021 after 27 years of marriage, but have vowed to continue their charity work together.
French also received about $6 billion worth of stock when she and Gates divorced.
The final divorce order, filed in Seattle court, did not include details of the agreement the couple reached on how to divide their marital assets.
“Under the terms of my agreement with Bill, my departure from the foundation will allow us to commit an additional $12.5 billion to work on behalf of women and families,” Melinda Gates wrote on social media in May.
The foundation is one of the most powerful and influential organizations in global public health and has committed more than $75 billion since its inception to bring business approaches to the fight against poverty and disease.
Between 1994 and 2018, Bill and Bill donated about $59.5 billion to the Seattle-based foundation, according to the foundation's website.
