Melinda Gates is an American philanthropist and a former general manager at Microsoft. In 2000, she co-founded the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation with her husband Bill Gates, the world’s largest private charitable organization as of 2015. Gates has consistently been ranked as one of the world’s most powerful women by Forbes.
Gates’ experience of a male-dominated workplace at Microsoft inspired her to encourage more women in the computing field. In September 2016, she announced her desire on increasing the diversity in the workplace, especially in the technology industry, stating: “Every company needs technology, and yet we’re graduating fewer women technologists. That is not good for society. We have to change it.” Gates also spoke about this topic at the 2017 Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing, an annual series of conferences.
In the 2016 annual letter from the Gates Foundation, Gates said women should “spend more time doing paid work, starting businesses, or otherwise contributing to the economic well-being of societies around the world. The fact that they can’t, holds their families and communities back.”
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