Melinda Gates Takes a More Prominent Role

Melinda Gates is stepping up her role at the foundation that she and her husband, Bill Gates, founded and is increasingly speaking out about global health and other issues the philanthropy focuses on, reports The Wall Street Journal.

On Thursday Mrs. Gates will announce the foundation’s plans to give $83-million in new grants to fight malaria at a White House conference on the disease.

As the last of the three young Gates children nears school age, Mrs. Gates “is stepping out of her previous unseen internal work for the foundation and into the public arena,” says the newspaper.

“I pick things I feel strongly about emotionally and mindfully,” Mrs. Gates tells The Journal, describing how she decides on which issues to focus her attention. “A lot of issues around mothers and children resonate strongly. That’s why I go to the developing world. I stand back from statistics. To go out to a village and be with a mother and child in a village helps me when I go back to Seattle and choose issues for the foundation to work on.”

She also says the money donated to the foundation this year by the investor Warren Buffett is allowing the foundation to deepen its efforts, so that instead of working on a project in one country, for example, it can do so in five.

Read the Gates Foundation’s statement on its new grants to fight malaria.

Read The Chronicle’s article about the foundation’s announcement last month on its decision to avoid operating forever.

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