Melinda French Gates resigns from Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation

Melinda French Gates will resign as co-chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, she announced Monday. French Gates, whose last day will be June 7, has helped lead the philanthropic organization since its founding in 2000.

As part of the separation agreement with her former husband Bill Gates, upon leaving the foundation she will receive an additional $12.5 billion for her work on behalf of women and families.

“This is not a decision I came to lightly,” French Gates said in a statement posted to X, the social media platform. “I am immensely proud of the foundation that Bill and I built together and of the extraordinary work it is doing to address inequities around the world. I care deeply about our foundation team, our partners around the world, and everyone who is touched by its work.”

French Gates added that she will share more about her coming charitable plans “in the near future.” Alongside her role at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, in 2015 French Gates set up Pivotal Ventures, her own philanthropic investment company that works to advance social progress in the United States, particularly for women and minorities.

As part of French Gates’ departure, the organization’s name will change to the Gates Foundation. Bill Gates will be the sole chair.

“I want to thank Melinda for her critical contributions to the Foundation from its very beginning,” Bill Gates said in a separate statement Monday. “As a co-founder and co-chair Melinda has been instrumental in shaping our strategies and initiatives, significantly impacting global health and gender equality. I am sorry to see her leave, but I am sure she will have a huge impact in her future philanthropic work.”

Gates Foundation CEO Mark Suzman shared the news with foundation employees Monday, saying that French Gates “made this decision, after considerable reflection, based on how she wants to spend the next chapter of her philanthropy.”

“Melinda has new ideas about the role she wants to play in improving the lives of women and families in the U.S. and around the world,” Suzman said. “And, after a difficult few years watching women’s rights rolled back in the U.S. and around the world, she wants to use this next chapter to focus specifically on altering that trajectory.” 

French Gates has a net worth of $13.3 billion, while Bill Gates’ personal wealth is valued at $153 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.

In recent years, French Gates has given more and more of her attention to issues of women’s economic empowerment, particularly through the work of Pivotal Ventures. The company also invests in various causes to get more American women elected to political office and achieve parity among women and men in politics.

“We know that there is literally no country in the world that has not gone from low- to middle-income or middle- to high-income without making sure first women have access to birth control. And if you roll back that benefit, women can't get an education, they can't finish their degree, they can't start a business,” she said last month at the Global Inclusive Growth Summit, hosted by the Mastercard Center for Inclusive Growth on the sidelines of the World Bank-International Monetary Fund Spring Meetings.

“We have to start with women's health, and then education and jobs,” she continued at the event, for which Devex was the media partner. “I think back in our own country, the United States, when I was growing up and 10 years old, it was the first time that women were able to open a bank account without their husbands' signature — in the ’70s, in this country. So we have to break down and change these laws and change what is possible.”

Her departure from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation comes three years after the billionaire couple announced their divorce in May 2021 after 27 years of marriage. At the time, they said French Gates could resign from the foundation after two years if she or Bill Gates determined they could not work together following their divorce. In such a case, French Gates would receive “personal resources” for her philanthropic work from Bill Gates, the foundation said, which “would be completely separate from the foundation’s endowment, which would not be affected.”

Even before the divorce, French Gates has spoken publicly about the challenge of forming an equal partnership with her former husband at the helm of their foundation. She wrote about it in her 2019 book, “The Moment of Lift.”
As one example, she wrote about how she had to fight for her name to be added as a co-author to Bill Gates’ annual letter on the work of the foundation. “He’s had to learn how to be an equal, and I’ve had to learn how to step up and be an equal,” she wrote.  

Headquartered in Seattle, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is one of the world’s biggest charitable foundations. It has an endowment of $75.2 billion and employs some 2,000 staff members around the world.

The organization, which has given away some $78 billion worth of grants since its founding, recently pledged to speed up its giving with a goal to increase its annual payout to nearly $9 billion by 2026. Its major priority as an organization is global health, along with education and gender equality.