TED2014
Bill and Melinda Gates: Why giving away our wealth has been the most satisfying thing we've done
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In 1993, Bill and Melinda Gates took a walk on the beach and made a big decision: to give their Microsoft wealth back to society. In conversation with Chris Anderson, the couple talks about their work at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, as well as their marriage, their children, their failures and the satisfaction of giving most of their money away.
Melinda Gates - Philanthropist
Melinda French Gates is co-chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, where she puts into practice the idea that every life has equal value. Full bioBill Gates - Philanthropist
A passionate techie and a shrewd businessman, Bill Gates changed the world while leading Microsoft to dizzying success. Now he's doing it again with his own style of philanthropy and passion for innovation. Full bio
Melinda French Gates is co-chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, where she puts into practice the idea that every life has equal value. Full bioBill Gates - Philanthropist
A passionate techie and a shrewd businessman, Bill Gates changed the world while leading Microsoft to dizzying success. Now he's doing it again with his own style of philanthropy and passion for innovation. Full bio
Double-click the English transcript below to play the video.
00:13
Chris Anderson: So, this is an
interview with a difference.
interview with a difference.
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On the basis that a picture
is worth a thousand words,
is worth a thousand words,
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what I did was, I asked Bill and Melinda
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to dig out from their archive
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some images that would help explain
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some of what they've done,
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and do a few things that way.
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So, we're going to start here.
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Melinda, when and where was this,
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and who is that handsome man next to you?
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Melinda Gates: With those big glasses, huh?
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This is in Africa, our very first trip,
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the first time either of us had ever been to Africa,
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in the fall of 1993.
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We were already engaged to be married.
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We married a few months later,
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and this was the trip where we really went to see
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the animals and to see the savanna.
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It was incredible. Bill had never taken that much time
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off from work.
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But what really touched us, actually, were the people,
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and the extreme poverty.
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We started asking ourselves questions.
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Does it have to be like this?
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And at the end of the trip,
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we went out to Zanzibar,
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and took some time to walk on the beach,
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which is something we had done a lot
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while we were dating.
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And we'd already been talking about during that time
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that the wealth that had come from Microsoft
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would be given back to society,
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but it was really on that beach walk
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that we started to talk about, well,
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what might we do and how might we go about it?
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CA: So, given that this vacation
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led to the creation of
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the world's biggest private foundation,
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it's pretty expensive as vacations go. (Laughter)
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MG: I guess so. We enjoyed it.
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CA: Which of you was the key instigator here,
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or was it symmetrical?
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Bill Gates: Well, I think we were excited
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that there'd be a phase of our life
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where we'd get to work together
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and figure out how to give this money back.
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At this stage, we were talking about the poorest,
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and could you have a big impact on them?
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Were there things that weren't being done?
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There was a lot we didn't know.
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Our naïveté is pretty incredible,
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when we look back on it.
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But we had a certain enthusiasm
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that that would be the phase,
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the post-Microsoft phase
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would be our philanthropy.
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MG: Which Bill always thought was going to come
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after he was 60,
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so he hasn't quite hit 60 yet,
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so some things change along the way.
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CA: So it started there, but it got accelerated.
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So that was '93, and it was '97, really,
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before the foundation itself started.
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MA: Yeah, in '97, we read an article
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about diarrheal diseases killing
so many kids around the world,
so many kids around the world,
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and we kept saying to ourselves,
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"Well that can't be.
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In the U.S., you just go down to the drug store."
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And so we started gathering scientists
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and started learning about population,
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learning about vaccines,
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learning about what had worked and what had failed,
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and that's really when we got going,
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was in late 1998, 1999.
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CA: So, you've got a big pot of money
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and a world full of so many different issues.
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How on Earth do you decide what to focus on?
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BG: Well, we decided that we'd pick two causes,
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whatever the biggest inequity was globally,
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and there we looked at children dying,
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children not having enough nutrition to ever develop,
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and countries that were really stuck,
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because with that level of death,
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and parents would have so many kids
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that they'd get huge population growth,
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and that the kids were so sick
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that they really couldn't be educated
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and lift themselves up.
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So that was our global thing,
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and then in the U.S.,
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both of us have had amazing educations,
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and we saw that as the way that the U.S.
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could live up to its promise of equal opportunity
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is by having a phenomenal education system,
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and the more we learned, the more we realized
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we're not really fulfilling that promise.
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And so we picked those two things,
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and everything the foundation does
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is focused there.
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CA: So, I asked each of you to pick an image
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that you like that illustrates your work,
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and Melinda, this is what you picked.
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What's this about?
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MG: So I, one of the things I love to do when I travel
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is to go out to the rural areas and talk to the women,
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whether it's Bangladesh, India,
lots of countries in Africa,
lots of countries in Africa,
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and I go in as a Western woman without a name.
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I don't tell them who I am. Pair of khakis.
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And I kept hearing from women,
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over and over and over, the more I traveled,
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"I want to be able to use this shot."
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I would be there to talk to them
about childhood vaccines,
about childhood vaccines,
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and they would bring the conversation around to
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"But what about the shot I get?"
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which is an injection they were
getting called Depo-Provera,
getting called Depo-Provera,
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which is a contraceptive.
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And I would come back and
talk to global health experts,
talk to global health experts,
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and they'd say, "Oh no, contraceptives
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are stocked in in the developing world."
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Well, you had to dig deeper into the reports,
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and this is what the team came to me with,
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which is, to have the number one thing
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that women tell you in Africa they want to use
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stocked out more than 200 days a year
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explains why women were saying to me,
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"I walked 10 kilometers without
my husband knowing it,
my husband knowing it,
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and I got to the clinic, and there was nothing there."
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And so condoms were stocked in in Africa
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because of all the AIDS work that the U.S.
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and others supported.
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But women will tell you over and over again,
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"I can't negotiate a condom with my husband.
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I'm either suggesting he has AIDS or I have AIDS,
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and I need that tool because then I can space
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the births of my children, and I can feed them
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and have a chance of educating them."
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CA: Melinda, you're Roman Catholic,
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and you've often been embroiled
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in controversy over this issue,
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and on the abortion question,
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on both sides, really.
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How do you navigate that?
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MG: Yeah, so I think that's a really important point,
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which is, we had backed away from contraceptives
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as a global community.
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We knew that 210 million women
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were saying they wanted access to contraceptives,
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even the contraceptives we have
here in the United States,
here in the United States,
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and we weren't providing them
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because of the political controversy in our country,
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and to me that was just a crime,
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and I kept looking around trying to find the person
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that would get this back on the global stage,
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and I finally realized I just had to do it.
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And even though I'm Catholic,
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I believe in contraceptives
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just like most of the Catholic
women in the United States
women in the United States
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who report using contraceptives,
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and I shouldn't let that controversy
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be the thing that holds us back.
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We used to have consensus in the United States
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around contraceptives,
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and so we got back to that global consensus,
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and actually raised 2.6 billion dollars
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around exactly this issue for women.
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(Applause)
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CA: Bill, this is your graph. What's this about?
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BG: Well, my graph has numbers on it.
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(Laughter)
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I really like this graph.
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This is the number of children
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who die before the age of five every year.
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And what you find is really
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a phenomenal success story
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which is not widely known,
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that we are making incredible progress.
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We go from 20 million
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not long after I was born
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to now we're down to about six million.
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So this is a story
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largely of vaccines.
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Smallpox was killing a couple million kids a year.
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That was eradicated, so that got down to zero.
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Measles was killing a couple million a year.
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That's down to a few hundred thousand.
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Anyway, this is a chart
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where you want to get that number to continue,
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and it's going to be possible,
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using the science of new vaccines,
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getting the vaccines out to kids.
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We can actually accelerate the progress.
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The last decade,
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that number has dropped faster
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than ever in history,
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and so I just love the fact that
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you can say, okay, if we can invent new vaccines,
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we can get them out there,
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use the very latest understanding of these things,
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and get the delivery right, that
we can perform a miracle.
we can perform a miracle.
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CA: I mean, you do the math on this,
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and it works out, I think, literally
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to thousands of kids' lives saved every day
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compared to the prior year.
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It's not reported.
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An airliner with 200-plus deaths
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is a far, far bigger story than that.
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Does that drive you crazy?
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BG: Yeah, because it's a silent thing going on.
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It's a kid, one kid at a time.
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Ninety-eight percent of this
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has nothing to do with natural disasters,
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and yet, people's charity,
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when they see a natural disaster, are wonderful.
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It's incredible how people think, okay,
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that could be me, and the money flows.
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These causes have been a bit invisible.
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Now that the Millennium Development Goals
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and various things are getting out there,
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we are seeing some increased generosity,
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so the goal is to get this well below a million,
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which should be possible in our lifetime.
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CA: Maybe it needed someone
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who is turned on by numbers and graphs
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rather than just the big, sad face
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to get engaged.
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I mean, you've used it in your letter this year,
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you used basically this argument to say that aid,
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contrary to the current meme
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that aid is kind of worthless and broken,
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that actually it has been effective.
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BG: Yeah, well people can take,
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there is some aid that was well-meaning
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and didn't go well.
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There's some venture capital investments
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that were well-meaning and didn't go well.
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You shouldn't just say, okay, because of that,
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because we don't have a perfect record,
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this is a bad endeavor.
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You should look at, what was your goal?
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How are you trying to uplift nutrition
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and survival and literacy
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so these countries can take care of themselves,
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and say wow, this is going well,
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and be smarter.
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We can spend aid smarter.
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It is not all a panacea.
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We can do better than venture capital, I think,
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including big hits like this.
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CA: Traditional wisdom is that
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it's pretty hard for married couples to work together.
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How have you guys managed it?
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MG: Yeah, I've had a lot of women say to me,
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"I really don't think I could work with my husband.
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That just wouldn't work out."
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You know, we enjoy it, and we don't --
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this foundation has been a coming to for both of us
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in its continuous learning journey,
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and we don't travel together as much
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for the foundation, actually, as we used to
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when Bill was working at Microsoft.
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We have more trips where
we're traveling separately,
we're traveling separately,
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but I always know when I come home,
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Bill's going to be interested in what I learned,
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whether it's about women or girls
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or something new about the vaccine delivery chain,
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or this person that is a great leader.
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He's going to listen and be really interested.
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And he knows when he comes home,
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even if it's to talk about the speech he did
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or the data or what he's learned,
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I'm really interested,
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and I think we have a really
collaborative relationship.
collaborative relationship.
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But we don't every minute together, that's for sure.
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(Laughter)
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CA: But now you are, and we're very happy that you are.
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Melinda, early on, you were basically
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largely running the show.
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Six years ago, I guess,
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Bill came on full time, so moved from Microsoft
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and became full time.
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That must have been hard,
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adjusting to that. No?
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MG: Yeah. I think actually,
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for the foundation employees,
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there was way more angst for them
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than there was for me about Bill coming.
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11:23
I was actually really excited.
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11:24
I mean, Bill made this decision
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11:26
even obviously before it got announced in 2006,
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11:28
and it was really his decision,
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11:30
but again, it was a beach vacation
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11:32
where we were walking on the beach
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11:33
and he was starting to think of this idea.
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11:35
And for me, the excitement of Bill
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11:38
putting his brain and his heart
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11:41
against these huge global problems,
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11:43
these inequities, to me that was exciting.
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11:45
Yes, the foundation employees had angst about that.
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11:49
(Applause)
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11:51
CA: That's cool.
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2116
11:53
MG: But that went away within three months,
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11:55
once he was there.
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927
11:56
BG: Including some of the employees.
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11:57
MG: That's what I said, the employees,
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1273
11:58
it went away for them three
months after you were there.
months after you were there.
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2122
12:01
BG: No, I'm kidding.
MG: Oh, you mean, the employees didn't go away.
MG: Oh, you mean, the employees didn't go away.
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2320
12:03
BG: A few of them did, but —
306
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1901
12:05
(Laughter)
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1833
12:07
CA: So what do you guys argue about?
308
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1943
12:09
Sunday, 11 o'clock,
309
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2657
12:11
you're away from work,
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1421
12:13
what comes up? What's the argument?
311
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2513
12:15
BG: Because we built this thing
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1645
12:17
together from the beginning,
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3119
12:20
it's this great partnership.
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1646
12:22
I had that with Paul Allen
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1854
12:23
in the early days of Microsoft.
316
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1911
12:25
I had it with Steve Ballmer as Microsoft got bigger,
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2812
12:28
and now Melinda, and in even stronger,
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3004
12:31
equal ways, is the partner,
319
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1886
12:33
so we talk a lot about
320
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1757
12:35
which things should we give more to,
321
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2128
12:37
which groups are working well?
322
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2544
12:40
She's got a lot of insight.
323
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1253
12:41
She'll sit down with the employees a lot.
324
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1647
12:42
We'll take the different trips she described.
325
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2116
12:45
So there's a lot of collaboration.
326
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3617
12:48
I can't think of anything where one of us
327
756433
1976
12:50
had a super strong opinion
328
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3270
12:53
about one thing or another?
329
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1836
12:55
CA: How about you, Melinda,
though? Can you? (Laughter)
though? Can you? (Laughter)
330
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2802
12:58
You never know.
331
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1216
12:59
MG: Well, here's the thing.
332
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1526
13:01
We come at things from different angles,
333
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1739
13:02
and I actually think that's really good.
334
770798
1932
13:04
So Bill can look at the big data
335
772730
2008
13:06
and say, "I want to act based
on these global statistics."
on these global statistics."
336
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3012
13:09
For me, I come at it from intuition.
337
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1866
13:11
I meet with lots of people on the ground
338
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1933
13:13
and Bill's taught me to take that
339
781549
1980
13:15
and read up to the global data and see if they match,
340
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2623
13:18
and I think what I've taught him
341
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1089
13:19
is to take that data
342
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1428
13:20
and meet with people on the ground to understand,
343
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1614
13:22
can you actually deliver that vaccine?
344
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2384
13:24
Can you get a woman to accept those polio drops
345
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3201
13:28
in her child's mouth?
346
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1330
13:29
Because the delivery piece
347
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1558
13:30
is every bit as important as the science.
348
798756
2203
13:33
So I think it's been more a coming to over time
349
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2522
13:35
towards each other's point of view,
350
803481
1295
13:36
and quite frankly, the work is better because of it.
351
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3270
13:40
CA: So, in vaccines and polio and so forth,
352
808046
2273
13:42
you've had some amazing successes.
353
810319
3799
13:46
What about failure, though?
354
814118
1232
13:47
Can you talk about a failure
355
815350
1691
13:49
and maybe what you've learned from it?
356
817041
2096
13:51
BG: Yeah. Fortunately, we can afford a few failures,
357
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2568
13:53
because we've certainly had them.
358
821705
2137
13:56
We do a lot of drug work or vaccine work
359
823842
4374
14:00
that you know you're going to have different failures.
360
828216
3276
14:03
Like, we put out, one that got a lot of publicity
361
831492
2227
14:05
was asking for a better condom.
362
833719
1301
14:07
Well, we got hundreds of ideas.
363
835020
1494
14:08
Maybe a few of those will work out.
364
836514
3194
14:11
We were very naïve, certainly I was, about a drug
365
839708
3379
14:15
for a disease in India, visceral leishmaniasis,
366
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2616
14:17
that I thought, once I got this drug,
367
845703
1651
14:19
we can just go wipe out the disease.
368
847354
1356
14:20
Well, turns out it took an injection
369
848710
2580
14:23
every day for 10 days.
370
851290
1636
14:25
It took three more years to get it than we expected,
371
852926
2387
14:27
and then there was no way
372
855313
1458
14:28
it was going to get out there.
373
856771
2368
14:31
Fortunately, we found out
374
859139
1219
14:32
that if you go kill the sand flies,
375
860358
3162
14:35
you probably can have success there,
376
863520
2122
14:37
but we spent five years,
377
865642
1855
14:39
you could say wasted five years,
378
867497
1378
14:41
and about 60 million,
379
868875
2007
14:43
on a path that turned out to have
380
870882
1340
14:44
very modest benefit when we got there.
381
872222
4165
14:48
CA: You're spending, like, a billion dollars a year
382
876387
3444
14:52
in education, I think, something like that.
383
879831
1935
14:53
Is anything, the story of what's gone right there
384
881766
4024
14:57
is quite a long and complex one.
385
885790
2456
15:00
Are there any failures that you can talk about?
386
888246
3922
15:04
MG: Well, I would say a huge lesson for us
387
892168
1790
15:06
out of the early work is we thought
388
893958
1248
15:07
that these small schools were the answer,
389
895206
2533
15:09
and small schools definitely help.
390
897739
1470
15:11
They bring down the dropout rate.
391
899209
1524
15:12
They have less violence and crime in those schools.
392
900733
2600
15:15
But the thing that we learned from that work,
393
903333
2146
15:17
and what turned out to be the fundamental key,
394
905479
2534
15:20
is a great teacher in front of the classroom.
395
908013
2064
15:22
If you don't have an effective teacher
396
910077
1607
15:23
in the front of the classroom,
397
911684
1066
15:24
I don't care how big or small the building is,
398
912750
2156
15:27
you're not going to change the trajectory
399
914906
1654
15:28
of whether that student will be ready for college.
400
916560
1953
15:30
(Applause)
401
918513
4595
15:35
CA: So Melinda, this is you and
402
923108
2310
15:37
your eldest daughter, Jenn.
403
925418
3554
15:41
And just taken about three weeks ago, I think,
404
928972
1899
15:43
three or four weeks ago. Where was this?
405
930871
1584
15:44
MG: So we went to Tanzania.
406
932455
1756
15:46
Jenn's been to Tanzania.
407
934211
842
15:47
All our kids have been to Africa quite a bit, actually.
408
935053
2703
15:49
And we did something very different,
409
937756
2215
15:52
which is, we decided to go spend
410
939971
1827
15:53
two nights and three days with a family.
411
941798
2419
15:56
Anna and Sanare are the parents.
412
944217
3101
15:59
They invited us to come and stay in their boma.
413
947318
3034
16:02
Actually, the goats had been there, I think,
414
950352
1499
16:04
living in that particular little hut
415
951851
1399
16:05
on their little compound before we got there.
416
953250
2671
16:08
And we stayed with their family,
417
955921
1498
16:09
and we really, really learned
418
957419
1934
16:11
what life is like in rural Tanzania.
419
959353
1853
16:13
And the difference between just going
420
961206
1614
16:15
and visiting for half a day
421
962820
1719
16:16
or three quarters of a day
422
964539
1462
16:18
versus staying overnight was profound,
423
966001
2398
16:20
and so let me just give you one explanation of that.
424
968399
3491
16:24
They had six children, and as I talked to Anna
425
971890
2129
16:26
in the kitchen, we cooked for about five hours
426
974019
1775
16:27
in the cooking hut that day,
427
975794
1643
16:29
and as I talked to her, she had absolutely planned
428
977437
1811
16:31
and spaced with her husband
429
979248
1470
16:32
the births of their children.
430
980718
1437
16:34
It was a very loving relationship.
431
982155
1655
16:36
This was a Maasai warrior and his wife,
432
983810
2303
16:38
but they had decided to get married,
433
986113
1909
16:40
they clearly had respect and love in the relationship.
434
988022
3335
16:43
Their children, their six children,
435
991357
1611
16:45
the two in the middle were twins, 13,
436
992968
2519
16:47
a boy, and a girl named Grace.
437
995487
2253
16:49
And when we'd go out to chop wood
438
997740
1573
16:51
and do all the things that Grace
and her mother would do,
and her mother would do,
439
999313
2435
16:53
Grace was not a child, she was an adolescent,
440
1001748
2592
16:56
but she wasn't an adult.
441
1004340
1477
16:58
She was very, very shy.
442
1005817
1751
16:59
So she kept wanting to talk to me and Jenn.
443
1007568
1761
17:01
We kept trying to engage her, but she was shy.
444
1009329
2835
17:04
And at night, though,
445
1012164
1606
17:05
when all the lights went out in rural Tanzania,
446
1013770
2807
17:08
and there was no moon that night,
447
1016577
1504
17:10
the first night, and no stars,
448
1018081
1722
17:12
and Jenn came out of our hut
449
1019803
1826
17:13
with her REI little headlamp on,
450
1021629
2817
17:16
Grace went immediately,
451
1024446
2138
17:18
and got the translator,
452
1026584
1356
17:20
came straight up to my Jenn and said,
453
1027940
2090
17:22
"When you go home,
454
1030030
1233
17:23
can I have your headlamp
455
1031263
1175
17:24
so I can study at night?"
456
1032438
1730
17:26
CA: Oh, wow.
457
1034168
1082
17:27
MG: And her dad had told me
458
1035250
1484
17:28
how afraid he was that unlike the son,
459
1036734
2087
17:31
who had passed his secondary exams,
460
1038821
1662
17:32
because of her chores,
461
1040483
1530
17:34
she'd not done so well
462
1042013
1438
17:35
and wasn't in the government school yet.
463
1043451
1804
17:37
He said, "I don't know how I'm
going to pay for her education.
going to pay for her education.
464
1045255
2535
17:39
I can't pay for private school,
465
1047790
1826
17:41
and she may end up on this farm like my wife."
466
1049616
2579
17:44
So they know the difference
467
1052195
1129
17:45
that an education can make
468
1053324
1025
17:46
in a huge, profound way.
469
1054349
2997
17:49
CA: I mean, this is another pic
470
1057346
1421
17:50
of your other two kids, Rory and Phoebe,
471
1058767
3406
17:54
along with Paul Farmer.
472
1062173
4138
17:58
Bringing up three children
473
1066311
1614
18:00
when you're the world's richest family
474
1067925
3002
18:03
seems like a social experiment
475
1070927
2296
18:05
without much prior art.
476
1073223
3572
18:08
How have you managed it?
477
1076795
1535
18:10
What's been your approach?
478
1078330
2215
18:12
BG: Well, I'd say overall
479
1080545
2633
18:15
the kids get a great education,
480
1083178
1762
18:17
but you've got to make sure
481
1084940
898
18:18
they have a sense of their own ability
482
1085838
1702
18:19
and what they're going to go and do,
483
1087540
1989
18:21
and our philosophy has been
484
1089529
2373
18:24
to be very clear with them --
485
1091902
1222
18:25
most of the money's going to the foundation --
486
1093124
1545
18:26
and help them find something they're excited about.
487
1094669
4341
18:31
We want to strike a balance where they have
488
1099010
1395
18:32
the freedom to do anything
489
1100405
1793
18:34
but not a lot of money showered on them
490
1102198
3340
18:37
so they could go out and do nothing.
491
1105538
3129
18:40
And so far, they're fairly diligent,
492
1108667
2978
18:43
excited to pick their own direction.
493
1111645
3208
18:47
CA: You've obviously guarded their
privacy carefully for obvious reasons.
privacy carefully for obvious reasons.
494
1114853
5568
18:52
I'm curious why you've given me permission
495
1120421
2194
18:54
to show this picture now here at TED.
496
1122615
1625
18:56
MG: Well, it's interesting.
497
1124240
1137
18:57
As they get older, they so know
498
1125377
1841
18:59
that our family belief is about responsibility,
499
1127218
3009
19:02
that we are in an unbelievable situation
500
1130227
2115
19:04
just to live in the United States
501
1132342
1618
19:06
and have a great education,
502
1133960
1691
19:07
and we have a responsibility
to give back to the world.
to give back to the world.
503
1135651
2048
19:09
And so as they get older
504
1137699
1053
19:10
and we are teaching them --
505
1138752
1020
19:11
they have been to so many
countries around the world —
countries around the world —
506
1139772
2360
19:14
they're saying,
507
1142132
1132
19:15
we do want people to know that we believe
508
1143264
1752
19:17
in what you're doing, Mom and Dad,
509
1145016
1501
19:18
and it is okay to show us more.
510
1146517
1961
19:20
So we have their permission to show this picture,
511
1148478
2652
19:23
and I think Paul Farmer is probably going to put it
512
1151130
1715
19:25
eventually in some of his work.
513
1152845
2455
19:27
But they really care deeply
514
1155300
1602
19:29
about the mission of the foundation, too.
515
1156902
2425
19:31
CA: You've easily got enough money
516
1159327
1922
19:33
despite your vast contributions to the foundation
517
1161249
2591
19:36
to make them all billionaires.
518
1163840
1634
19:37
Is that your plan for them?
519
1165474
1517
19:39
BG: Nope. No. They won't have anything like that.
520
1166991
2336
19:41
They need to have a sense
521
1169327
1935
19:43
that their own work is meaningful and important.
522
1171262
6536
19:49
We read an article long, actually,
before we got married,
before we got married,
523
1177798
3472
19:53
where Warren Buffett talked about that,
524
1181270
2645
19:56
and we're quite convinced that it wasn't a favor
525
1183915
2249
19:58
either to society or to the kids.
526
1186164
3254
20:01
CA: Well, speaking of Warren Buffett,
527
1189418
2068
20:03
something really amazing happened in 2006,
528
1191486
2664
20:06
when somehow your only real rival
529
1194150
2960
20:09
for richest person in America
530
1197110
1552
20:10
suddenly turned around and agreed to give
531
1198662
1370
20:12
80 percent of his fortune
532
1200032
2593
20:14
to your foundation.
533
1202625
1717
20:16
How on Earth did that happen?
534
1204342
1736
20:18
I guess there's a long version
and a short version of that.
and a short version of that.
535
1206078
1978
20:20
We've got time for the short version.
536
1208056
1382
20:21
BG: All right. Well, Warren was a close friend,
537
1209438
3755
20:25
and he was going to have his wife Suzie
538
1213193
4657
20:30
give it all away.
539
1217850
1555
20:31
Tragically, she passed away before he did,
540
1219405
3441
20:35
and he's big on delegation, and
541
1222846
3598
20:38
— (Laughter) —
542
1226444
2158
20:40
he said —
543
1228602
1411
20:42
CA: Tweet that.
544
1230013
855
20:43
BG: If he's got somebody
who is doing something well,
who is doing something well,
545
1230868
3161
20:46
and is willing to do it at no charge,
546
1234029
4457
20:50
maybe that's okay. But we were stunned.
547
1238486
2378
20:53
MG: Totally stunned.
BG: We had never expected it,
BG: We had never expected it,
548
1240864
2096
20:55
and it has been unbelievable.
549
1242960
1565
20:56
It's allowed us to increase our ambition
550
1244525
3140
20:59
in what the foundation can do quite dramatically.
551
1247665
3617
21:03
Half the resources we have
552
1251282
1504
21:04
come from Warren's mind-blowing generosity.
553
1252786
2884
21:07
CA: And I think you've pledged that
554
1255670
884
21:08
by the time you're done,
555
1256554
1790
21:10
more than, or 95 percent of your wealth,
556
1258344
1878
21:12
will be given to the foundation.
557
1260222
1895
21:14
BG: Yes.
558
1262117
1154
21:15
CA: And since this relationship, it's amazing—
559
1263271
3749
21:19
(Applause)
560
1267020
3366
21:22
And recently, you and Warren
561
1270386
2637
21:25
have been going around trying to persuade
562
1273023
1880
21:27
other billionaires and successful people
563
1274903
1976
21:29
to pledge to give, what,
564
1276879
1523
21:30
more than half of their assets for philanthropy.
565
1278402
5758
21:36
How is that going?
566
1284160
2415
21:38
BG: Well, we've got about 120 people
567
1286575
3172
21:41
who have now taken this giving pledge.
568
1289747
2438
21:44
The thing that's great is that we get together
569
1292185
2606
21:46
yearly and talk about, okay,
570
1294791
2109
21:49
do you hire staff, what do you give to them?
571
1296900
1965
21:51
We're not trying to homogenize it.
572
1298865
1227
21:52
I mean, the beauty of philanthropy
573
1300092
1048
21:53
is this mind-blowing diversity.
574
1301140
2007
21:55
People give to some things.
575
1303147
1163
21:56
We look and go, "Wow."
576
1304310
2679
21:59
But that's great.
577
1306989
1108
22:00
That's the role of philanthropy
578
1308097
1129
22:01
is to pick different approaches,
579
1309226
2487
22:03
including even in one space, like education.
580
1311713
1992
22:05
We need more experimentation.
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But it's been wonderful, meeting those people,
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sharing their journey to philanthropy,
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how they involve their kids,
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where they're doing it differently,
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and it's been way more successful than we expected.
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Now it looks like it'll just keep growing in size
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in the years ahead.
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MG: And having people see that other people
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are making change with philanthropy,
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I mean, these are people who have
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created their own businesses,
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put their own ingenuity behind incredible ideas.
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If they put their ideas and their brain
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behind philanthropy, they can change the world.
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And they start to see others doing it, and saying,
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"Wow, I want to do that with my own money."
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To me, that's the piece that's incredible.
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CA: It seems to me, it's actually really hard
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for some people to figure out
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even how to remotely spend that much money
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on something else.
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There are probably some billionaires in the room
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and certainly some successful people.
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I'm curious, can you make the pitch?
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What's the pitch?
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BG: Well, it's the most fulfilling thing
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we've ever done,
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and you can't take it with you,
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and if it's not good for your kids,
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let's get together and brainstorm
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about what we can be done.
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The world is a far better place
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because of the philanthropists of the past,
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and the U.S. tradition here, which is the strongest,
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is the envy of the world.
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And part of the reason I'm so optimistic
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is because I do think philanthropy
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is going to grow
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and take some of these things
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government's not just good at
working on and discovering
working on and discovering
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and shine some light in the right direction.
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CA: The world's got this terrible inequality,
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growing inequality problem
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that seems structural.
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It does seem to me that if more of your peers
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took the approach that you two have made,
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it would make a dent
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both in that problem and certainly
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in the perception of that problem.
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Is that a fair comment?
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BG: Oh yeah. If you take from the most wealthy
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and give to the least wealthy, it's good.
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It tries to balance out, and that's just.
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MG: But you change systems.
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In the U.S., we're trying to
change the education system
change the education system
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so it's just for everybody
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and it works for all students.
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That, to me, really changes
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the inequality balance.
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BG: That's the most important.
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(Applause)
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CA: Well, I really think that most people here
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and many millions around the world
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are just in awe of the trajectory
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your lives have taken
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and the spectacular degree to which
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you have shaped the future.
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Thank you so much for coming to TED
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and for sharing with us and for all you do.
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BG: Thank you.
MG: Thank you.
MG: Thank you.
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(Applause)
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BG: Thank you.
MG: Thank you very much.
MG: Thank you very much.
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BG: All right, good job. (Applause)
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4171
ABOUT THE SPEAKERS
Melinda Gates - PhilanthropistMelinda French Gates is co-chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, where she puts into practice the idea that every life has equal value.
Why you should listen
The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation works to help all people lead healthy, productive lives. As co-chair, Melinda French Gates helps shape and approve strategies, review results, advocate for foundation issues and set the overall direction. In developing countries, the foundation focuses on improving people's health with vaccines and other life-saving tools and giving them a chance to lift themselves out of hunger and extreme poverty. In the United States, it seeks to dramatically improve education so that all young people have the opportunity to reach their full potential. Based in Seattle, Washington, the foundation is led by CEO Jeff Raikes and co-chair William H. Gates Sr., under the direction of Bill Gates, Melinda Gates and Warren Buffett.
In recent years, Melinda French Gates has become a vocal advocate for access to contraception, advancing the idea that empowering women to decide whether and when to have children can have transformational effects on societies. In 2012, Gates spearheaded the London Summit on Family Planning, with the goal of delivering contraceptives to 120 million women in developing countries by 2020. When asked why she got involved in this issue, Gates said, "We knew that 210 million women were saying they wanted access to the contraceptives we have here in the United States and we weren't providing them because of political controversy in our country. To me, that was just a crime. I kept looking around trying to find the person to get this back on the global stage. I realized I just had to do it."
Melinda Gates | Speaker | TED.com
Bill Gates - Philanthropist
A passionate techie and a shrewd businessman, Bill Gates changed the world while leading Microsoft to dizzying success. Now he's doing it again with his own style of philanthropy and passion for innovation.
Why you should listen
Bill Gates is the founder and former CEO of Microsoft. A geek icon, tech visionary and business trailblazer, Gates' leadership -- fueled by his long-held dream that millions might realize their potential through great software -- made Microsoft a personal computing powerhouse and a trendsetter in the Internet dawn. Whether you're a suit, chef, quant, artist, media maven, nurse or gamer, you've probably used a Microsoft product today.
In summer of 2008, Gates left his day-to-day role with Microsoft to focus on philanthropy. Holding that all lives have equal value (no matter where they're being lived), the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has now donated staggering sums to HIV/AIDS programs, libraries, agriculture research and disaster relief -- and offered vital guidance and creative funding to programs in global health and education. Gates believes his tech-centric strategy for giving will prove the killer app of planet Earth's next big upgrade.
Read a collection of Bill and Melinda Gates' annual letters, where they take stock of the Gates Foundation and the world. And follow his ongoing thinking on his personal website, The Gates Notes. His new paper, "The Next Epidemic," is published by the New England Journal of Medicine.
Bill Gates | Speaker | TED.com