On Her Own

Melinda French Gates talks about her divorce, her life, and her post-Gates Foundation plan to help the world by helping women.

- BELINDA LUSCOMBE, KIRKLAND, LESLIE DICKSTEIN

But it's fair to say that in the sprawling, Pacific lodge-style home of Melinda and Bill Gates, the complexity was particularly acute. The foundation the couple co-led had been running a flu study in their hometown of Seattle, which had detected early cases of COVID-19 in the region. There were video calls with infectious-disease specialists they funded, world leaders, epidemiologists, journalists, and public-health officials.

Two of their three children were home from school full time. Plus, the couple was secretly separated, trading off who lived at the family house and who was elsewhere while they tried to figure out if they could stay married.

"It was a super intense time for us as a foundation," says Melinda French Gates, sitting in her industrial-chic office in Kirkland, Wash., three days after exiting the world-changing organization that bore her name for almost 25 years. "The other thing I would say, though, is, unusually, it gave us the privacy to do what needed to be done in private. You know, I separated first before I made the full decision about a divorce. And to be able to do that in private while I'm still trying to take care of the kids, while still making certain decisions about how you're going to disentangle your life-thank God." Most divorces are not undertaken lightly. They can blow a hole in a couple's finances and health, the happiness of their children, and each partner's self-esteem. French Gates didn't have to worry so much about that first issue. But unlike others, she did have to think about the effect her divorce, finalized two weeks before her 57th birthday in August 2021, might have on the world. It's not an exaggeration to say that if the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation were damaged by the collapse of the Bill and Melinda Gates marriage, it could affect the welfare of millions of people around the globe.