Word: melindas
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Only after their youngest child, Phoebe, turned 1 did Melinda begin to go public. "Bill and I both felt it was important that people know we're both behind the foundation," she says. And the more she traveled in the developing world, the harder it was to keep quiet. "I was very moved. I felt that I had a role to give some voice to the voiceless...
Their friends and the staff at the Gates Foundation go to great lengths to emphasize that Melinda and Bill are equals. "She is not a junior partner in any way, shape or form. Bill likes that," says Warren Buffett, a close friend (and the second richest man in the world, for those who are counting). Says Sylvia Mathews, the foundation's chief operating officer: "We joke and say Bill and Melinda have 21/2 degrees: she has two; he has a half." (Melinda, 41, has a bachelor's degree in computer science and economics and a master's in business from...
...despite what anyone says, it's clear that the big decisions still get made by Bill Gates. At a quarterly review of grants at the offices in Seattle, he sits at the head of the table, with Melinda on his left and his father on his right. Nervous staff members direct their presentations to him, not Melinda--who drinks a Snapple and seems like the most relaxed person in the room. Bill flings out questions in his trademark squeaky voice, with an expression on his face that suggests more curiosity than concern. "How are they going to prioritize?" he asks...
...their trips to the developing world, however, the dynamic changes. Talking to women in hovels about condom use, Bill sits with his hands in his lap, nodding robotically, while Melinda leans forward to ask questions and hold babies. On the first day of their trip, after flying all night to Dhaka, Bangladesh, from Seattle, the Gateses visited a place known as the Cholera Hospital, where they are helping fund groundbreaking research on pneumonia. On their tour, they walked into a room full of 30 crying babies and their mothers. All the babies had cholera, and they were lying on gurneys...
Standing before the festering multitudes, a doctor urged them to go ahead and pick out a family to talk to. "Do you want to go first?" Melinda quietly asked Bill. "No," he answered under his breath, his smile frozen on his face. Melinda strode forward, knelt beside one mother and reached out to help give the baby medicine. Then the doctor sprayed her hands with sanitizer, and they moved on to the next encounter...