I dont consider myself a journalist. And nobody else would consider myself a journalist. I began to take on the life of being an interviewer, even though i have a day job of running a private equity firm. How do you define leadership . What is it that makes somebody tick . You have a new book called the moment of lift. What does the moment of lift refer to . The phrase, lift . Melinda for me, i grew up in a family in dallas, texas, and my dad was an apollo engineer on the apollo missions. And it was when we would watch that rocket launching, the earth would be shaking and the rocket was rumbling, and it finally pushed against the forces of gravity and went to the moon. To me, that is the same thing i have seen with 20 years of work with the foundation for women. That if we can help lift up all women, we will change the world, but there are a lot of forces pushing women down. David it is the largest foundation in the world. It has assets of how much now . Melinda now, we have assets of about 50 billion. David you created the foundation from the wealth created by microsoft, and then one day, warren buffet called you and bill and said, guess what, i dont know what to do with my wealth. But i want to give it to you, because i like what you are doing. Is that essentially it . Melinda that is essentially it. Warrens plan was his wife was very involved in philanthropy. His plan had been to give it away through the foundation that he and she had, but she passed away early, unexpectedly. So then yes, he came and surprised bill and i and said, the vast majority would go through our foundation and then three that his children had and the Susan T Buffett foundation. David so when somebody called you and said guess what, i am giving you 50 billion you did not expect, what did you say . Thank you, i cannot believe this . Melinda i can honestly tell you that bill and i took a walk after that discussion and we were alone and we both cried. And i think we cried, both of us, because to know warrens generosity and that we would be able to do even so much more than we were already doing for people around the world, it was just an unbelievably touching moment. And a touching moment of friendship. David when you are doing work of the foundation, the two of you, going to Subsaharan Africa among other places, a lot of , travel, eventually you decided you wanted to focus a little bit more on womens issues. And one of the first ones you thought about was contraception. You are a committed catholic. Was it difficult for you to say, we should focus more of the foundations efforts on contraception . What was bills view . And did you get a lot of flack from people in the catholic hierarchy . Melinda yeah. So bill was 100 supportive of this decision. And he knew i had learned so much in the developing world from talking to women. He knew i had looked at the data, i had looked at where we did not have data. And i was able to talk to him about it. He knew this was the greatest antipoverty tool we have. The greatest. And if you make sure that women have access all over the world 200 million women were asking the world to have this tool. And we were not delivering it, as the world. I knew when i decided to take this on, the reason we were not delivering it was political controversy in our own country and religious issues. So it was a difficult decision for me because of my catholic roots. I am still catholic. But when i met so many women around the world, and they would discuss with me, that this is literally a lifeanddeath crisis for them as a mom. They would say, if i have another baby too soon, i will die in childbirth. Or, i have five children. It is not fair to my last child or the others to have another one when i cannot feed them. And so i had to wrestle with my catholic faith and say, what do i believe in . I believe in saving lives, so this is the right thing to do. David did you find sometimes, a woman would say, take my child . Because i cannot raise this child. Melinda more than once. I learned be from warrens wife, susie, if you can go in anonymously, i will go into many rural settings, a woman from the west. A pair of khaki pants and a tshirt. I will give you an example. I was in northern india. I visited a health clinic. So i went into a village. I talked to a woman. By the time i was finished, i had one last question. I said so, what hope do you have . Her name was mina, what hope do you have . She looked down for a long time. She cast her eyes down. I thought oh, no, i have asked something inappropriate. She finally looked up at me and said, the truth is, i have no hope. I have no hope for feeding this child or that one, or educating them. Please, take them home with you. And when that happens it was not the first time it had happened to me it is heartbreaking. To see a woman who loves her clearly loves her sons that much, but to know they would be better off going home with a stranger, that is heartbreaking. And that is the story of many women, many women and families around the world. David annually, you have a letter that was written by the foundation heads, you and bill. Originally, it was written by bill. When you said, bill, i want to get womens issues in, what did he say . Melinda yeah, so, first of all, the idea for the annual letter came from warren. And bill and i both thought that was a really good idea. However, we had three very Young Children at the time. And i was on several boards and working at the foundation. As an executive. I said to bill, i dont have time to put pen to paper. I just cant do it. Bill said, that is ok, i will do it. So bill started writing it, and he did a great job, but he got very used to writing it alone. So when this contraceptive initiative that i was leading came out, i said, bill, i really want to write about this in the annual letter. And he felt like the annual letter was going quite well from his perspective. And so we had some difficult discussions at home, and i finally wrote a sidebar in the annual letter. The next year, we discussed it again, before pen was put to paper, and i wrote a piece of the annual letter, about a third. And the next year, we had another discussion and i wrote half. Now, i always write half of the annual letter. We have to sometimes have those uncomfortable conversations. Bill and i believe in equality, but did we really have it in our voice . Not yet. And so we worked on that systematically over time. And now, i can tell you, my husband is 100 committed to making sure i have my voice fully in the world. David ok, so, like most married couples, you have disagreements from time to time . Melinda sure. Sure. I think every marriage does. And i believe, in marriage, you should have a little healthy grist, because that is how you move forward. David another one you talk about is abusive relationships. Melinda the reason i even write a page in the book about having been in an abusive relationship is that i want people to know it can happen to anyone. It silences your voice. And millions of women are being either harassed or abused in all kinds of places. We can go in and name it and recognize it and all commit to changing it everywhere in the world. David lets talk about the beginning of your life. You grew up in dallas. Melinda i did. David and you went to an allgirls catholic school. You also went to duke. Where else did you think of going . Melinda well, actually, the first place i thought i wanted to go was notre dame, because many of my girlfriends in high schools dads had gone there. But when i went, my dad and i went to visit notre dame, they were phasing out Computer Science. They thought it was a fad. I knew i wanted to study Computer Science. Then, i saw duke. They just had a big grant from ibm. Two great computer labs. I said, this is where i am going. David you were not on the basketball team. Everybody at duke does not play basketball. Melinda [laughs] not everybody. I went to the games, though. I love them. David you point out in the book, women back then were more involved in Computer Science years ago then maybe today. Why was that . Melinda yes. So the time i was in college, the late 1980s, we had about 37 of college undergrads as in Computer Science undergrads were women. We were on the way up, like law and medicine. That has since dropped down to about 17 or 18 . Now it is on a slight uptick to 19 . We dont actually know why women have dropped out of Computer Science, but there are some theories looking at the data we do have. That is that personal computers were really promoted to boys as a home gaming device, and women and girl said, im out. And then, it became this selfreferential circle. David you went in a special program, a fiveyear program where you get an undergraduate degree and mba. After five years, you had your degree, or you are about to have your degree. You were interviewing at computer companies. There was a Small Company interviewing at duke as well, called microsoft. Melinda i was part of the first hiring class of mbas at microsoft. There were nine men and me. David so you go to microsoft, and is it as good as you think . Melinda we were changing the world. I loved that. I loved the innovative nature. I loved creating products. I did consider leaving microsoft within about two years, because i was the culture was abrasive, quite honestly. I didnt and i could play that game, i knew how to do the debate, i knew how to stand up for my ideas, my teams ideas, but i didnt like myself. And i didnt like how i was treating other people when i was going to the grocery store, out in the world, or interact with other people. So i thought about leaving. Then i thought, i dont think this will work, but i will try being myself in this culture and just see if it works. And if not, i will go take some other job. I started to be myself, and i started to build teams that were collaborative and that worked together more and were less abrasive. It turns out, i could recruit people from all over the company, to my surprise, to work on these teams. David so when did you first meet bill . Melinda so i actually first met bill three weeks into my job, i had never been to new york city. I had never hailed a cab. Microsoft sent me to new york for a business meeting. And so my female roommate microsoft used to make you have another roommate when you went traveling on the road. My female roommate said, hey, when youre done with your business meeting across town, why dont you come to this dinner . I said, great. I came from across town, sat down at dinner. There were two chairs open, because i came late from the meeting. I sat down. The next chair was empty. 10 minutes later, bill came in and sat down next to me. So that is when i first met bill, about three weeks into the job. David he said wow, how about getting to know me better . He didnt say that then . Melinda he said, a bunch of us are going out dancing tonight. Why dont you come . And i said, well, i have some other plans, with somebody i knew from Business School tonight. Back at microsoft, a few months later everybody used to work late on friday nights, late on saturday. You would work until about 3 00 or 4 00. And so my car was parked next to his in a parking lot. He struck up a conversation. And we talked for a while. Then he said, he asked me if i would go out with him eventually. This was saturday. Two weeks from friday night. And i said, two weeks from friday night . Like, i was 22 years old. I have no idea what im doing two weeks from friday night. I said, that is not quite spontaneous enough for me. He said, ok, well, can i take your phone number . He did, called me an hour later. He said, well, is this spontaneous enough for you . How about tonight . But then he said, but i have a User Group Meeting and a dinner i have to go to. How about a glass of wine downtown . I thought, a User Group Meeting on a saturday night . But i agreed to meet him for a glass of wine, and that was our first date. David was it hard to work at the company while people knew you were dating the ceo and founder . Melinda yeah, the first date with bill, i thought i would go out with him once, maybe twice. I just thought, he will be interesting. Obviously, he is running this company that is doing all of these Amazing Things in this world. Then, when i realized we were going to start dating more after the first two days, i thought, this this is tricky. Im not sure i want to do this. I had worked really hard on Computer Science, my mba, i studied economics. I thought, i am not sure this is going to go well for me. I remember talking to my parents on the phone, particularly my mom. She said, this is not a good idea. And i said, yeah, but he is really interesting and he actually has a big heart that i think a lot of people dont see, and i dont know why i have gotten to see that side of him. What i decided to do, i would date him, but i made it known in the company. I did not try to hide it. And i made it incredibly clear to the teams that i was managing that i had these very bright lines, and i did not go home from microsoft and talk to bill about work. Because i am preparing teams to go into meetings with senior leadership, including bill, and they are nervous. And i am having to prepare them, prepare myself. The last thing i could do is go home and talk to him. They had to know i had their back in the meeting. And so i had to have very bright lines around that, and we made it work. David it worked out. Melinda it did work out. David it is hard to believe, the first night you met him, i just cant see bill going out and being a dancer. Is he a big dancer . I would not picture he would be going out and dancing at night. Melinda he likes to. [laughter] david ok, ok. You decided, when your children came, that you wanted to spend more time with them. You left microsoft. Melinda i surprised bill and told him i wanted to leave microsoft, yes. David his reaction was . Melinda really . Because he knew i loved working, and i loved working at microsoft. He also knew i had that piece of my brain that loved to be on the working side. So he was quite surprised when i told him i was going to leave. David did you then go to the foundation fulltime after your children were a little bit older . Melinda my whole issue about how much i was going to work at the foundation is i had it timed for when our kids would get older. I knew until our last daughter went off to preschool, i was not going to be fulltime. Once i knew she was going to be in preschool, my plan was always to work fulltime. David lets talk about the issues of women in Subsaharan Africa and some of the other things you address in your book. You point out that in Subsaharan Africa, and other places, there are child marriages. Women are forced to marry at 6, 7, 8 years old. Why does that happen . Melinda quite often, a family will marry their daughter off because, one, they then dont have to feed her, so there is less resources from their family, and two, they also want to protect the familys honor. And that is a cultural barrier that is horrible for girls, because they then often dont go to secondary school. Or if they are in secondary school, they are pulled out of school. They are moved to a village often where they know no one. It is not even close to their home. It is a horrific thing for a girl. She basically becomes the property of her husbands family or her motherinlaw. David so what have you tried to do to prevent some of this . Melinda the only way to overcome cultural barriers is, first you go in with very sensitive ways with partners, and then the community has to commit to it. David another area you talk about in the book is a situation where you have female cutting. Genital cutting. What is the purpose of that, and how frequent is that done with young women around the world . Melinda that is still a tradition, particularly in a lot of northern africa. It is horrific for a young girl. Young girls bleed to death. It is trauma, a traumatic event in their lives. Villagers do it for different reasons. They believe it protects the girls honor. They believe if they love their daughter, they will do it. But what i have known is that when education comes in i talked to a village leader, an elder, a group of women who used to cut their daughters and no longer do. And a group of women who are the cutters who no longer do it. They said, you know, when people bring in education from outside, and they talk to us about how people view this in other places of the world, it starts to change our mind, and we start to question our past, and then we create change. David another one you talk about is abusive relationships. Husbands are very abusive to their spouses in many different ways. And you point out in the book and it must have been difficult to write about this that you had an abusive relationship as well before you were married. Melinda the reason i even write a page in the book about having been in an abusive relationship is that i want people to know, it can happen to anyone. It silences your voice. It is a way of silencing a womans voice in a marriage or in her workplace or her community. For me, i lost my selfconfidence. And millions of women are being either harassed or abused in all kinds of places. And, again, it silences women. And so we have to talk about this barrier. We have to lift it up. And what we can do is collect data about it, the world does not actually collect data on abuse. And then, we can go in and name it and recognize it and commit all commit to changing it everywhere in the world. David Jackie Kennedy once famously said that if you mess up raising your children, nothing else in life really matters. Melinda when you have a great means, you dont have money as a buffer. My kids have always had an allowance. When they wanted something, they either had to use their allowance to buy it or put it on their wish list for christmas and hope that their grandparents or we would give it. If they saw something in the store they wanted to have, i would say just because i can, does not mean that i should. David a few years ago, you, bill, and warren decided to launch the giving pledge. What was the purpose of the giving pledge, and how many people have signed . Melinda yes, so the purpose this was warrens big idea. The giving pledge was to say, if you have great wealth, if you are a billionaire in our country , or anywhere in the world, you can afford to give half away. And that is the right thing for society. Bill and warren are really clear that they could not have founded their businesses if it had been , say, in malawi or mozambique. And so we benefit from what society gives us, the infrastructure. And so, those resources at least have to go back to society. You have been a big help to us in this, david. We now have 190 families that have committed to the giving pledge in 22 countries around the world. David there is a bit of a reaction against wealthy people saying, lets put our money here, lets put our money there. How do you respond to that . Melinda what i know to be true is that bill and warren and i believe we should not have this inequity that exists in the united states. We need to do something about that. But we are lucky. I meet so many people around the world who would like to live in our country, who would like to live in our democracy and our capitalistic system, but we do have gaps in it, and we need to do things to fix those gaps. The thing bill and i try to be most cognizant of is what is the role of philanthropy . All philanthropy can be is that catalytic wedge. We can try things, we can experiment with our own money , where you would not want the government to experiment with taxpayer money. But then, we have to prove it out, and then, it is up to government to scale up. So we feel philanthropy with government, with a private sector, with a Nongovernmental Organization that set of partnerships and that ecosystem can do the best for the world. David many people are probably wondering what it is like to be the richest couple in the world. Does it make it possible to go to a restaurant, movie . Melinda first of all, we are incredibly privileged and lucky to have the resources we have from microsoft. That is that, full stop. We do give up some privacy by having that. But i have to say, most people are incredibly respectful. Seattle is a lovely place to live. Bill grew up there. And so, the people who come up, it is more because they are proud of what he has built with microsoft, or what is being carried on, or what we are doing with the foundation. We try to look at those as moments of grace. We try to be out in the world. Bill and i still love to go out to movies, to go out to restaurants. David you told me a couple of stories about your life together. I might ask you about them. You told me once when you dropped your oldest daughter off at college, like anybody that drops their kids off in school, in college, they first say, you need this, you need that. You decided you would go to lowes to get some additional things to help your daughters room look better. I cant picture bill gates going through lowes, shopping. Melinda well, it was actually a really sweet moment. We were looking for an extension cord, which was not the easiest thank defined, it turns out, at lowes. When bill goes into a store like that, it is like a laboratory. He is curious about everything. Jen and i kept having to drag him and say, come on, we have to find these extension cords. Stay focused. And he mostly was not recognized until we got into the cashiers line. But he just plays along with it and it is fine. David Jackie Kennedy once famously said that if you mess up raising your children, nothing else in life really matters. Melinda absolutely. David as parents, we know the hardest thing to do is raise children. So you have had to shield three children from the enormous wealth and publicity. Melinda i have tried with our children to always first, have them know that they are loved him most importantly, they are loved, no matter what. And their job in life is to find their talents. Whatever those talents are, we will support that. It is up to them to bring those talents in the world, no matter what they want to be. I also when the children were young, i have taken them out in the seattle community. Even when they were kindergarten age, and then at age appropriate times, when they got to be about 10 or 11, out into the developing world. To not only do a beautiful safari, but actually to see what life is like on the ground. The last thing i will say, when you have a great means, you dont have money as a buffer. My kids have always had an allowance. We have always had an agreement, they are not to tell other people their allowance. Neither am i. Some people would say, that is all the gates kids get . Others would say, that is too much money that they get in a week. But since they were young, they have always had an allowance that grew over time. When they wanted something, they either had to use their allowance to buy it or put it on their wish list for christmas and hope their grandparents or we would get it, and if there was something they saw in the store they just had to have, i would say, just because i can, doesnt mean that i should. David what would you like your legacy to be, you and bill together . For what you have done on the face of the earth . Melinda that we helped other people lift themselves up. To help everybody advance in society. I hope people say about me, i helped lift up other women. David thank you very much and again, it is a very good book and i highly recommend it. The moment of lift. Thank you very much, melinda. Melinda thanks david. Great conversation. David thank you. U. Ive seen a lot of crises, but nothing like what we now have. It is i financial crisis. To ceos now talk and see how they are living through this crisis. I want to see how they are dealing with their customers, their employees, and the government. How are they going to rise to the occasion . What is going to make the ceos great . That is what i want to know . This is leadership live. Hello. This is leadership live. I am David Rubenstein coming to you from my home in bethesda, maryland
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