by Joshua Chaffin and Andrew Edgecliffe-Johnson in New York
It was April 2019 and Melinda French Gates was touring to promote her book, The Moment of Lift: How Empowering Women Changes the World, when she opened a window into her marriage to Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates.
The hardest things to write about, she confided to an interviewer from CNBC, were “moments in our marriage where I was asking Bill for more equality”. Her story, she said, was “also the story of millions of women”.
A few months later, Melinda would do something unhappily familiar to many millions of women: she consulted a divorce lawyer. Then this May the Gateses announced, via Twitter, that they were ending their 27-year union. They were doing so, they explained, “because we no longer believe we can grow together as a couple in the next phase of our lives”.
The ex-couple insisted when they announced their split in May that little would change at the sprawling philanthropy. Yet Wednesday brought a remarkable turn of events: Along with committing another $15 billion to the endowment and announcing a plan for new trustees, the pair also laid bare that they may not be able to work together in the future raising the possibility French Gates will exit.
“Gates and French Gates are fully committed to continuing to work constructively together at the foundation,” the organization said in a statement. “However, they have also agreed to an additional step to ensure the continuity of the foundation’s work: if after two years either decides they cannot continue to work together as co-chairs, French Gates will resign her position as co-chair and trustee.”
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