Melinda Gates: What she’s learned
Melinda Gates walks into the Pacific Northwest-themed conference room at Pivotal Ventures, the investment and incubation company she founded to jump-start progress for U.S. women in technology.
Having just finished a recording session, she moves seamlessly through the day at the company’s headquarters on the shores of Lake Washington. As she slips onto a stool at the head of a sleek conference table and starts answering questions, it’s instantly apparent that Ms. Gates’ professionalism and poise are matched by her easygoing warmth.
Right now, she’s talking energetically about one of her top U.S. policy recommendations: paid family medical leave for both fathers and mothers when a child is born. If the father takes time off, “we know that over time he builds a deeper relationship with his child,” Ms. Gates says. Her broader agenda? Incentivizing men to do more household work – a burden now primarily borne by women. “It would kick a door open that has been shut in this country,” she says.
Author of a new bestseller on women’s empowerment, “Moment of Lift,” her first book, Ms. Gates would later give a talk in London that was sold out within 48 hours. After that, she would jet to Paris to speak with finance ministers of leading industrial nations about digital financial inclusion for women: a plan to link mobile phones to digital bank accounts that she says will add $3.7 trillion to emerging economies by 2025 and create 95 million jobs, boosting opportunities for women.
Large numbers and superlatives tend to accompany Ms. Gates wherever she goes. She has been at the forefront of some of the most important technological advances of the past half-century, partnering with her husband, Bill, at Microsoft Corp. in the shared belief that “writing software for personal computers would give individuals the computing power that institutions had, and democratizing computing would
