Upon hearing the name Melinda Gates, one could mistakenly link it only to the success of her husband, Bill Gates. But, as an American philanthropist awarded with the Presidential Medal of Freedom and a former general manager at Microsoft, she has also been regarded as one of the most powerful women in the world, forging her own path and opening doors for other women in STEM.

Gates, born French, developed an early interest in computers while taking an advanced math class at the Ursuline Academy. Daughter of an Apollo-program engineer, Gates said, “my dad nurtured my interest in science and technology, encouraged me to learn to code, and always empowered me to dream bigger."

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When Gates finished her degrees in computer science and business at Duke, she was initially offered a job at powerhouse IBM. However, she followed the advice of an IBM hiring manager—not to join IBM, but to take a job at start-up Microsoft if she had the opportunity—and took over the position of Microsoft’s product manager in 1987. She worked on products such as the ubiquitous budget trip planning website Expedia and continued to climb her way up from there.

This career decision was pivotal for Gates, defining both her personal and professional lives. She met Bill Gates during a business dinner in New-York and seven years later they were married. In 1996, the Gates couple had their first child and she shocked everyone, including her husband, by leaving the company to become a stay-at-home mom. For her it was a no-brainer and, in any case, never marked the end of her career. She was committed to positive social impact and focused her energy instead on the non-profit world.

In 2000, billionaire couple founded the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. They have worked to advocate for some of the most intractable problems in developing countries. Since the start, they have spent billions on global health development, including helping to fight diseases like HIV, malaria, and polio. Recently they have donated significantly to health research in the battle against the COVID-19 pandemic.

And in 2019 Gates published a book: The Moment of Lift: How Empowering Women Changes the World. It encourages readers to support women and remove barriers, to help not just women but society as a whole, a humanitarian perspective that has defined Gates’s groundbreaking career.