Melinda French Gates
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How does Melinda French Gates define forgiveness?
Are you good at forgiveness?
Yes. Yes. Yes, I think I am. If you can't eventually forgive somebody, then you hurt yourself, I think, right? And I don't want to live my life hurting myself.
I'm Rachel Martin, and this is Wildcard, the show where cards control the conversation. Each week, my guest answers questions about their life, questions pulled from a deck of cards. They're allowed to skip one question and to flip one back on me. My guest this week is Melinda French-Gates.
I've learned that love absolutely takes trust, absolute trust. And if you have that deep trust, both partners can grow individually and together.
Melinda French-Gates has lived through some very high-profile turning points. including ending her marriage to Bill Gates and starting her own separate philanthropic work. She wrote beautifully about all of it in a memoir that was published last year called The Next Day, Transitions, Change, and Moving Forward. And it is my great pleasure to welcome Melinda French-Gates to Wildcard. Hi. Hi. Thanks for having me, Rachel.
What pivotal moments influenced Melinda's career?
I'm so pleased that we could make this work. Me too. We're going to do round one, Memories.
Memories.
Are you ready? I'm ready. Okay, let's go. Three cards, three questions. You pick one, two, or three.
Three.
Three. What's a routine from your childhood that you miss? Oh, gosh.
I guess... Getting ready in the morning with my sister. So I have an older sister who's 22 months older than me, Susan, and then two much younger brothers. But we just, even when we were in grade school, we shared a bathroom and we would get ready together in the morning and curl our hair and talk about the day ahead. And then when we were in high school, you know, the whole thing. I grew up in Dallas, Texas. Mm-hmm. So the big hole, big hair thing. So there was some time. There was an investment happening. Oh, there was a lot of time. Maybe an hour before we went out. And hairspray. And hairspray. So you had a lot of time to, like, talk about your day and visit and say, well, what do you think of this color?
What do you think of that ribbon? What should I do here? And so I just – we're still very close, but we live in different states. And so I just missed that, like – I hadn't even thought about it, that sweet routine we had together. Yeah.
Do you still – I don't know if you ever have occasion to be in a hotel room with her. Like have you found yourself as adults falling back into that? That has happened to me with my sister where circumstances will mean we're in the same place with the same bathroom and all of a sudden we're getting ready together at the same time and I have a similar kind of nostalgic flashback.
Well, I'm not sure. I can't think of a recent time where we've been in a hotel room doing that. But I will say that I have it with my daughters. So I have two adult daughters now, 29 and 23. And as they were coming up, you know, I would go in their bathroom in the mornings when they're getting ready and sometimes just sit there while they're getting ready. Yeah. And a lot of times they would come in my bathroom. And, of course, girls borrow things. My sister and I borrowed things from each other, makeup, et cetera. But I also miss – so I've had that tradition also with my own girls. And when we're back together in a hotel room, the three of us, we get together. We get together and, you know, talk and get ready to go out.
And, oh, do these shoes work? I'm not sure, you know. Yeah.
I have boys, so it's just different. It's just they're just—they don't care what hair product I'm using or if I'm going to curl my hair or not, so I am envious of that. Three more cards, still in memories. One, two, or three? Two. Two. What's a place that shaped you just as much as any person did?
Hmm.
What motivated Melinda to focus on women's health?
I would say working at Microsoft in the early years. I worked there for nine years. I was a computer science undergraduate, went straight to business school, and then boom, straight to Microsoft. And I was quite young when I started. There were very few women in tech. And because I had this computer science background and this business background, it was a natural fit.
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Chapters
6 chapters
1
How does Melinda French Gates define forgiveness?
0:00–1:12
2
What pivotal moments influenced Melinda's career?
1:12–4:02
3
What motivated Melinda to focus on women's health?
4:02–5:15
4
How did Melinda's childhood shape her values?
5:15–14:33
5
What lessons did Melinda learn from her time at Microsoft?
14:33–26:44
6
How does Melinda navigate trust after her marriage?
26:44–43:16