The Next Day: Transitions, Change, and Moving Forward

Melinda French Gates is an American philanthropist. Born and raised in Dallas, Texas, she was educated at Ursuline Academy of Dallas, Duke University, and Duke’s Fuqua School of Business. After earning a bachelor’s degree from Duke in computer science and economics in 1986 and an MBA from Duke’s Fuqua School of Business in 1987, Melinda joined Microsoft as a marketing manager and eventually became a general manager, leading the development of many of the company’s multimedia products.

Shortly after joining Microsoft in 1987 as a multimedia product developer, she began dating the company’s co-founder and then-CEO Bill Gates, whom she married in 1994. They have three children together. The couple divorced in 2021—a transition that features heavily in French Gates’s thematic exploration of the Balance Between Independence and Interdependence. She left Microsoft in 1996 to focus on raising their children and pursuing philanthropic work, marking the beginning of her transformation from technology executive to global advocate for women and children.

From 2000 to 2024, she and Gates co-chaired the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the world’s largest private charitable organization. For their philanthropic endeavors, which focused on global health, development, and education, they received numerous awards and honors, including the U.