Melinda Gates

For more than 20 years now, Melinda Gates has been on a mission to make the world a better place by empowering women. As co-chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Gates has focused on women-focused programs ranging from women healthcare, women education, and raising women-focused investments. These changes have been implemented to complement her bigger-lens goals, including expanding women power and influence in society to continue to shape more inclusive decisions. Not only does she continue bringing light to the issue of gender disparity, but also uses her voice to call for philanthropists, business leaders, and policy makers to prioritize more gender-focused policies.

In 2015, she founded Pivotal Ventures, an investment and incubation company to help close the funding gap for female founders. Her three goals are eliminating women barriers at work, creating leadership women opportunities, and holding business accountable for pro-gender equality. In 2019, Gates released her book The Moment of Lift: How Empowering Women Changes the World, where she touches upon her personal anecdotes from her philanthropic experiences to talk about current day pressing issues. She explains how kickstarting women empowerment and bringing women to more power has the potential to bring long-lasting changes to almost all aspects of a community.

Melinda Gates continues to heavily invest in women advocacy financially today, as she hopes for others to also recognize the work that needs to be done. Her outlook on the need for collective action in order to bring change is the reason why she’s one of the most influential women today.

Artist: Alina Fedotova, from Russia