MELINDA FRENCH GATES

The billionaire philanthropist is single, 60, running her own foundation—and redefining what it means to leave a legacy.

- JESSICA BENNETT

There are some, shall we say, eccentricities we have come to expect of a certain class of tech billionaire. Morning ice baths instead of coffee. Calorie restriction—or slaughtering their own meat—for lunch. Meetings on the beach, or barefoot in a conference room, or perhaps while in a rocket ship to space. Whether it's ego, or masculine performance, or some sense of competition, chasing the extreme seems to be a way of life for these titans—when they're not chasing immortality itself. How else do you explain wanting to upload your consciousness to the cloud?

Melinda French Gates—philanthropist; billionaire; and former spouse to an original tech titan, Microsoft cofounder Bill Gates—is, in the way we think about billionaires today, something of an anomaly. She is one of the richest women in the world. Yet shortly after the Gateses announced their split, French Gates pledged to donate a majority of her income. “Giving away money your family will never need is not an especially noble act,” she wrote in a public letter. And as for conquering the universe? “That's just not me,” French Gates tells me, laughing. “That's not who I am.”

French Gates is speaking with me in her office in Kirkland, Washington, a nondescript concrete structure in an office park along the lake that, while it doesn't have a cryochamber in its basement or an indoor swimming pool, does have free tampons in the bathroom (and a copy of Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique on display in the lobby). She is here to talk about the philanthropic endeavors funded by her foundation, Pivotal Ventures, through which she has committed $2 billion to “expanding women's power and influence” in the U.S. and globally.