Bill and Melinda Gates: Impacting The World Through Philanthropy
Bill Gates is an American computer programmer and entrepreneur and philanthropist, who co founded Microsoft Corporation, the world’s largest personal-computer software company.
Gates enrolled at Harvard University in the fall of 1973, originally thinking of a career in law. He soon however, dropped out of college in 1975 to pursue his business, Microsoft, with partner Allen.
In March 1986, Gates took Microsoft public with an initial public offering (IPO) of $21 per share, making him an instant millionaire at age 31. Gates held 45 percent of the company’s 24.7 million shares, making his stake at that time $234 million of Microsoft’s $520 million.
Over time, the company’s stock increased in value and split numerous times. In 1987, Gates became a billionaire when the stock hit $90.75 a share. Since then, Gates has been at the top, or at least near the top, of Forbes’ annual list of the top 400 wealthiest people in America. In 1999, with stock prices at an all-time high and the stock splitting eight-fold since its IPO, Gates’ wealth briefly topped $101 billion.
Although the company started out on shaky footing, by 1979 Microsoft was grossing approximately $2.5 million. At the age of 23, Gates placed himself as the head of the company. With his acumen for software development and a keen business sense, he led the company and worked as its spokesperson. Gates personally reviewed every line of code the company shipped, often rewriting code himself when he saw it necessary.
Gates at first preferred to stay out of the public eye, handling civic and philanthropic affairs indirectly through one of his foundations. Nevertheless, as Microsoft’s power and reputation grew, so did his public presence.
Bill met his wife Melinda, when she took a job at Microsoft Corporation in 1987. The two hit it off and after six years, were married in 1994. That year, Melinda and her husband co-founded what was later to become the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. In 2006 she restructured the organization. In 2012 she pledged $560 million toward improving access to contraception for women in poor countries.
Born Melinda Ann French on August 15, 1964, in Dallas, Texas, Mrs Gates developed an interest in computers at an early age. Melinda pursued her interest at Duke University in 1986, graduating with a bachelor’s degree in computer science. She went on to obtain a master’s in business administration, with a focus in economics, from Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business.
Melinda started off at Microsoft as a product manager, primarily developing multimedia and interactive products. Over the course of her nine years working for Microsoft, she had worked her way up to general manager of information products.
In 1994, Bill and Melinda established the William H. Gates Foundation. Although the foundation’s initial goal was to place computers and Microsoft products in libraries all over the United States, over the years Melinda expanded the organization’s vision to include worldwide improvements in education, world health and investment in low-income communities around the world. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation’s efforts also came to address global poverty and health issues. world health and investment in low-income communities around the world
In 2000, the couple combined several family foundations and made a $28 billion contribution to form the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Over the next few years, Bill’s involvement with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation occupied much of his time and even more of his interest.
Gates relinquished day-to-day oversight of Microsoft in June 2008—although he remained chairman of the board—in order to devote more time to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. In February 2014 he stepped down as chairman but continued to serve as a board member until 2020. During this time he was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom (2016).
The couple has had a very active presence in the world’s dealing with the novel coronavirus. After years of warning that the world was not ready for the next pandemic, Bill Gates saw his ominous words come true with the outbreak of the novel coronavirus in 2020.
In March, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation teamed with the Wellcome Trust and Mastercard to pledge $125 million toward efforts to curb the outbreak, and Gates subsequently revealed that his foundation was prepared to invest billions of dollars into building factories earmarked for the development of a vaccine.
According to Bill, “One of our first big investments was to an organization called Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance. Since 2000, Gavi and partners have immunized more than 760 million children, saving over 13 million lives. And now, Gavi has a new effort underway to purchase COVID-19 vaccines for lower-income countries as soon as they are available.”
A UN finance support platform tagged “One UN COVID-19 Response Basket Fund”, says it has received additional one million dollars The UN Development Programme (UNDP), which manages the “One UN COVID-19 Response Basket Fund” announced that it had received one million dollars contribution from the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation, to help Nigeria to address challenges posed by the pandemic in the country.
Bill and Melinda Gates are recognised as part of the Neusroom 100 helping the world fight the coronavirus. Check out the full list of honourees here.
