Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation CEO Mark Suzman said Friday that the foundation will prioritize geographic and gender diversity when selecting new trustees. However, he still did not say how many trustees would be joining co-chairs Bill Gates and Melinda French Gates at its helm next year.
Earlier this week, the Gates Foundation announced a series of governance changes that include launching a search for new trustees. Right now, it has only two — Gates and French Gates — after a third, billionaire Warren Buffett, announced his resignation last month.
Such concentrated leadership is unusual for a charitable organization of the Gates Foundation’s size, with a staff of about 1,600 and a $49.8 billion endowment as of 2019. Gates and French Gates said this week that they will add an additional $15 billion to the endowment.
“Certainly, we’ll be thinking in terms of geographic diversity, given how much of our work is overseas,” Suzman said during a briefing Friday. “We will certainly take into account gender and other types of diversity.”
The larger goal is to bring on people with “strong, independent, credible voices,” who will add distinctive perspectives to the foundation’s work as it tries to navigate global issues, he said.
Suzman used Friday’s briefing with subscribers of the Gates Foundation’s newsletter, The Optimist, to offer reassurances about the foundation's stability.
The foundation’s fundamental focus and priorities remain the same despite recent changes that include the Gateses’ divorce and Buffett’s departure. The announcement that French Gates could resign from the foundation in two years if she and Gates feel that they cannot continue to work together also has raised concerns.
Suzman said the Gateses had assured him that their goal was to remain co-chairs of the foundation “long into the future.” And he added that the two, along with Buffett, “have been urging us to stay very focused on our current work but at the same time have agreed to a number of steps to try and ensure our long-term sustainability as a foundation.”
Those ongoing priorities include working with the international COVAX initiative to deliver 2 billion COVID-19 vaccine doses to lower-income countries this year, as well as helping the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, the African Union, and individual nations on the continent respond to the pandemic, he said. The foundation also remains committed to its long-standing mission of addressing diseases such as malaria, tuberculosis, and HIV, as well as to goals around education and gender equality, he said.
About the author
Stephanie Beasley@Steph_Beasley
Stephanie Beasley is a Senior Reporter at Devex, where she covers global philanthropy with a focus on regulations and policy. She is an alumna of the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism and Oberlin College and has a background in Latin American studies. She previously covered transportation security at POLITICO.
