Melinda French Gates dishes more on her divorce from Bill Gates
Couple married for almost 3 decades
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Melinda French Gates divorced Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates in 2021, and she recently offered more information about her experience surrounding the split.
She told Time magazine things have "been wonderful" since officially ending her 27-year marriage to Gates and acknowledged getting a divorce is a "hard thing."
The philanthropist's wide-ranging interview with the magazine took place around the time of her stepping down from her and her ex-husband’s Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
Melinda French Gates arrives for a meeting during the New Global Financial Pact summit in Paris on June 23, 2023. (Christian Liewig/Corbis/Getty Images)
The foundation is one of the most massive nonprofits, with its focus areas including global health, development and gender equality. She stepped down after concluding it was what she called in a May statement the "right time" for her to "move forward into the next chapter with my philanthropy," which will include her Pivotal Ventures work and an additional $12.5 billion for "work on behalf of women and families."
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She and Gates started the foundation more than two decades ago while they were still married.
French Gates told Time she "thought a lot about my three children" and "about the effect on the foundation" while deciding in 2021 to divorce her then-husband.
Melinda French Gates speaks at the Clinton Global Initiative meeting at New York Hilton Midtown on Sept. 19, 2022. (Noam Galai/Getty Images for Clinton Global Initiative)
"Those are the three biggest buckets: me, the kids, and the foundation," she reportedly said. "And I wanted to make sure that when we came out through it to the other side – when I came through it on my side – all of those pieces were intact."
The pair separated before she "made the full decision about the divorce" when the coronavirus pandemic was still in full swing, she said in the magazine interview.
French Gates discussed how helpful the privacy that the pandemic afforded to her was for handling the end of her marriage, according to Time.
MELINDA FRENCH GATES TO RESIGN FROM GATES FOUNDATION
The billionaire philanthropist has previously talked about privacy given by the COVID pandemic in relation to her divorce.
Her and Gates’ split became public knowledge in May 2021.
Philanthropist Melinda French Gates listens during the annual spring meetings at the International Monetary Fund headquarters in Washington, D.C., on April 14, 2023. (STEFANI REYNOLDS/AFP via Getty Images)
They jointly said at the time they "no longer believe[d] we can grow together as a couple in this next phase of our lives."
In addition to the Gates Foundation and Pivotal Ventures, French Gates is also one of the founders and signatories of the Giving Pledge. That initiative, co-created with Gates and Berkshire Hathaway’s Warren Buffett, calls for signatories to give away at least 50% of their wealth to charitable causes.
French Gates has a personal fortune of $11.1 billion, according to Forbes.