Years before joining the world of advisers guiding wealthy people and foundations on how and where to give away their money, Gabrielle Fitzgerald learned about the vast gulfs between various philanthropic approaches from two billionaires whose giving habits couldn’t be more different: Microsoft co-founders Bill Gates and Paul Allen.
Fitzgerald spent nearly a decade at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, where everything is meticulously planned out. She started as a senior program officer before eventually directing strategy-making for global programs. In 2014 she left to run the Paul G. Allen Foundation’s $100 million Ebola program.
She found that the two organizations had “two very different brands of philanthropy.”