The Albies - Melinda French Gates

Justice to me means you don't have to fight twice as hard to get half of what you want. So often people ask me, what can I do? I'm one individual and what I always say is you can make the difference in a child's life. Lifting up one other person can make a difference and when you add up all those points of light, it's what creates change. To know that even one life has breathed easier because you have lived, this is to have succeeded. Melinda Frenchgate says she's donating a billion dollars to support women and families. Many centered on reproductive rights. I'm trying to disrupt society. I am trying to change social norms. And you know, when you think about badass woman, that is exactly what she is. Melinda started work as a computer scientist. She brings a deep understanding of the importance of data and she's not afraid of diving into deep math to try to understand problems. She goes out into the field. She meets with people and really listens to their experience and sometimes that helps her understand that what you're seeing in the data actually isn't accurate. Melinda is the kind of leader that I'd like to replicate. She's empathetic, curious, thoughtful. She's responsible for so many lives having been saved, so many initiatives that otherwise wouldn't exist. And her leadership focuses squarely on how she can bring others with her and not just with her, how she can push them out in front. It's not just what Melinda does, it's how she does it. I think we have to all use our voices to get equality in our homes, in our communities, and in our workplaces. I grew up in Dallas, Texas. I am one of four children. What really shaped my view about young women and girls was when I went to high school. It was run by these Ursula nuns and they taught us that a young girl could be anything that she wanted to be. It wasn't until I got out in the world that I started to really look back and realize that the opportunities for women are not the same as for men. There are a lot of injustices that hold women back and that just shouldn't be. When this idea came forward from Michelle and Amal and also my team that, hey, child marriage really is an issue that's a problem in Malawi, it was natural for the three of us to come together and say, okay, from our different angles, from women's health, girls' education, the court system, all of it under a lens of justice and dignity and what's right, it was a natural for us to come forward and say, let's work on this together. If you think about who in the world today has done the most to advance women's equality, Melinda French-Gates, who will appear on so many people's shortlist, and she's certainly on mine, she's someone who constantly reminded us that the plight of girls around the world is one that should concern us all. Less than 2% of philanthropic giving in the U.S. goes to organizations that are focused on advancing the rights of women and girls. Melinda doesn't just talk about these problems, she's actually working every day to try and solve them, and I think the reverberations and the impact of that are felt around the world. Taking on these problems of society, I do believe that culture change is some of the hardest work. Societies are better off when everybody rises together. If you roll things back, like women's health, that's a crisis, and those are needless crises in many, many cases. I'm really looking at how do we lift up women, how do we unlock the power that is already inside women, and help them to have and use that full power. When you educate a generation of girls, they do change the world. There's no holding them back. That's what gives me hope.