Melinda Gates

I find Melinda French Gates far more interesting than the billionaire's-ex-wife framing allows. She earned a computer science degree and an MBA at Duke, then shipped products at Microsoft in the late eighties when few women did, and she brought that same engineer's discipline to philanthropy, measuring outcomes instead of just signing checks. What I respect most is the post-divorce chapter: she kept her own name on the work and doubled down on women's health and economic power. Time honored her in 2005, but to my eye her real influence has only grown since she started operating solo.

This take was written by generative AI, one per person, from publicly reported facts (editorial policy). It is a reading of the record, not reporting.

Name (English)

Melinda Gates

Name (Japanese)

メリンダ・フレンチ・ゲイツ

Reading

めりんだ・ふれんち・げいつ

Born

August 15, 1964 (age 62)

Origin

Dallas, Texas, United States

Occupation

businessperson / patron of the arts / philanthropist / founder / entrepreneur

Zodiac / Chinese zodiac

Leo / Dragon

University

Duke University

Awards & achievements

• 2002 Jefferson Awards for Public Service
• 2005 Time Person of the Year
• 2009 honorary doctorate from the University of Cambridge
• 2013 honorary doctor of the Duke University
• 2013 Forbes list of The World's 100 Most Powerful Women
• Padma Bhushan
• 2014 Chatham House Prize

• Official sitehttps://www.gatesfoundation.org/Pages/home.aspx
• Instagramhttps://www.instagram.com/melindafrenchgates/
• Xhttps://x.com/melindagates
• Wikipedia (English)https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melinda%20French%20Gates
• Wikipedia (Japanese)https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E3%83%A1%E3%83%AA%E3%83%B3%E3%83%80%E3%83%BB%E3%82%B2%E3%82%A4%E3%83%84
• Wikidatahttps://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q463877

Tags

• Texas
• businessperson
• patron of the arts
• philanthropist

Last updated

November 2, 2026

Only publicly available facts are listed; non-public or unconfirmed items are omitted. Base data was compiled from Wikidata from June 2026 onward; ages are recalculated daily and deaths are checked against Wikidata on an ongoing basis. English text is machine-assisted (facts translated by Sonnet, "My Take" written by Opus 4.8). The Japanese page is the source of record.