Melinda French Gates

One of the particular characteristics of the Gates Foundation is its focus. It doesn’t try to solve all the world’s problems, but it attempts to be very comprehensive about the issues it addresses. After Melinda French Gates left the foundation she took that focus to her now 10-year old enterprise Pivotal Ventures, which looks for ways to improve women’s welfare. In October, she announced she would distribute $250 million to organizations that have innovative ideas about improving the mental and physical health of women and families, part of a bigger $1 billion thrust to advance women’s rights and wellbeing on several fronts. One of the biggest challenges in women’s health is a lack of data—not just about health issues that only strike women, like family planning, maternal mortality and menopause, but also about issues that show up differently in women than in men, such as auto-immune disease and digestive disorders. Gates wants to fund research and solutions to address these gaps, and hosted an open call for enterprises to pitch for some of that $250 million. But it’s not just about medicine. As caregivers, women sometimes have challenges getting access to the health services they need even if they’re readily available. Gates is also, for the first time, spending money on reproductive rights in the U.S., partly because she now has grandchildren. Recipients include the Guttmacher Institute and the Center for Reproductive Rights. “My granddaughter will have fewer rights than I do,” she told TIME in 2024. “That doesn’t make any sense.”