In a new memoir, billionaire Melinda French Gates writes about the end of her marriage to Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, and her ongoing philanthropic work, directing funds and attention to women's health initiatives. Her book is The Next Day. Also, David Bianculli reviews the new season of Black Mirror.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy
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This is Fresh Air. I'm Tanya Mosley. And my guest today is Melinda French-Gates. Five years ago, she stood at a crossroads. After 27 years of marriage to Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, she decided to walk away, not only from a relationship that had defined much of her adult life, but eventually the philanthropic empire they built together.
Last spring, Melinda left the Gates Foundation, the organization that had become the heartbeat of her professional identity. In her new book, The Next Day, Transitions Change and Moving Forward, Gates reflects on these seismic shifts, not just the end of her marriage or the reinvention of her public life, but the deeply personal evolution that came with those transitions.
She takes us inside the moments that have defined her, becoming a mother, grieving the loss of one of her best friends, and grappling with the hard-earned lessons of philanthropy. Melinda French-Gates is the co-founder and former co-chair of the Gates Foundation, the world's largest private charitable organization.
She's also the founder of Pivotal Ventures, which focuses on social progress for women and families in the United States. Melinda French-Gates, welcome to Fresh Air. Thanks for having me, Tanya. Melinda, I want to talk for a moment about your philanthropic work, because we all have been hearing about the ripple effects of the Trump administration's funding cuts.
And I know that philanthropy is such a tightly interwoven web that often works in collaboration with the government to fund initiatives. How are these cuts affecting the work that you do?
Well, the cuts of things like USAID are absolutely devastating for families all over the world. I Everything, you know, that philanthropy does is we try and find catalytic wedges and ways to work. We take risk where a government can't with taxpayer money and shouldn't. But then once we know something works, it's really up to government to scale it up.
So to see that women won't have health services or there'll be more cases of malaria next year. It's almost unimaginable to me, especially given that both Republican and Democratic administrations really relied on USAID and not only saw the good work that it was doing, but started to scale it up even more. It's why we actually have less death and disease in the world.
So it just makes no sense to me.
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