Melinda Gates Takes On a Noble Life Devoid of Fanfare

Melinda French Gates is determined to change the world in unthinkable ways.I never considered Melinda Gates a Smart Sensuality woman until I saw her in the March 2009 issue of American Vogue. In this case, I’m glad to be wrong, but seriously-speaking, clothes are not front and center in the mind of Melinda Gates, wife of the richest man in the world, Bill Gates, founder of Microsoft.

“We’re trying to solve hunger in the world,” says Melinda Gates. “And, of course, disease.”

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has embraced the world of philanthropy with an egalitarian mission going far beyond the tenets of business-focused capitalism. “If an American child should be protected from measles, then so should a child in Zambia.”

Vogue reminds us that Melinda Gates is about as pretentious as Warren Buffett, who in 2006 pledged the majority of his fortune to Bill and Melinda’s foundation.

“You have to be humble in what we are doing, but you also have to be bold,” she says. “You have to ask yourself, Are we going to feed people or sit behind ivory towers and argue about how to do it? I want people to live and to survive, so we will get out there and try something. If it doesn’t work, we will try something else. And we will keep trying until we find something that works.” The effect of those outsize goals is already evident. The Gates Foundation could accomplish little without its wealth, but the philanthropy’s true power lies in its willingness to apply the merciless principles of the business world to charity. If they can’t see how a project can eventually help solve one of the world’s most pressing problems, they won’t pay for it. “

Melinda French Gates, Co-Chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation talks during the session “The Girl Effect on Development” on the fourth day of the World Economic Forum in Davos January 31, 2009.Even existing as we do on the fringes of the philanthropy world, it’s clear that the Gates Foundation has brought a new sense of accountability to giving. What are the results of a project? How is it measured? You can rest assured that Bill and Melinda Gates would not have poured a trillion dollars into Africa, only to step back and admit that the investment has been not only a failure, but left the continent worse off.

I was jealous reading the couple now works together full time at the foundation, their individual offices connected via French doors.

Melinda was, for a while, worried about all that togetherness. “Last year he wasn’t around much. And I wondered what it would be like when he was. But there is a lightness to it now,” she says, referring to both their marriage and their shared mission. “It’s quite a responsibility, but there is this unbelievable joy to it.”

One wonders if the Gates Foundation will soon be consulting to the state department on how to manage the investments of American taxpayers in foreign aid programs.

Bottom line, we need the Gates offensive just about everywhere in the world — which is a pitiful reality of modern life. It’s not that they make no mistakes or fund programs that bring lackluster results. Their efforts in agriculture and food supply aren’t universally embraced.

But Bill and Melinda Gates don’t make the same mistakes for 40 years or sponsor political decisions, when people are their stated focus. You don’t have to love them, but it’s quite shabby not to admire a team so devoted to all the world’s people — the worse off the better when it comes to the Gates orbit of influence.  Anne

In this image released by PictureGroup, Bill Gates, left, and his wife Melinda, right, pose with President and Chief Executive Officer of Viacom Philippe Dauman at the “Get Schooled” conference and premiere hosted by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation…