Melinda Gates quits Gates Foundation with $12.5 billion

Melinda Gates, an American philanthropist and former wife of Microsoft founder, Bill Gates, has announced her plans to quit the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF).

Melinda serves as the co-chair of the foundation she co-founded with her ex-husband, Bill Gatess in 2000. The organization has for years funded thousands of developmental projects in several countries, including Nigeria.

Melinda Gates, who separated from Bill Gates in 2021 but continued to work together on the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF), announced this on her social media handle on Monday.

“This is not a decision I came to lightly,” he wrote in X, formerly Twitter.

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BMGF is a charitable foundation that focuses primarily on ensuring an improved healthcare, poverty reduction and expansion of educational opportunities across the world and this has created a lot of job opportunities for people within and outside Nigeria.

The foundation is one of the largest charitable foundations in the world, holding an estimated asset of $69 billion as of 2020.

In December 2022, the BMGF had an endowment of approximately $67.3 billion.

Bill and Melinda announced their separation after being married for 27 years but agreed to keep their roles as the co-chairs and trustees of the foundation without changes.

Melinda said she will have an additional $12.5 billion as part of the agreement after leaving the BMGF.

“Under the terms of my agreement with Bill, in leaving the foundation, I will have an additional $12.5 billion to commit to my work on behalf of women and families,” she said.

“I am immensely proud of the foundation that Bill and I built together and of the extraordinary work it is doing to address inequities around the world.”

Melinda Gates said she plans to leave the Foundation on June 7, and she will share more about her future charitable plans in the near future.