Melinda French Gates is an American philanthropist and a former multimedia product developer and manager at Microsoft. Born and raised in Dallas, Texas, she graduated from Duke University and started working at Microsoft in 1987. Shortly afterwards, she began dating the company's co-founder and then-CEO Bill Gates, whom she married in 1994. In 2000, she and Gates co-founded the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the world's largest private charitable organization. The couple, who have three children together, divorced in 2021. In 2024, she resigned from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to pursue philanthropy independently, having received $12.5 billion for charitable work as part of her separation agreement.
The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF) is an American private foundation founded by Bill Gates and Melinda French Gates. Based in Seattle, Washington, it was launched in 2000 and is reported to be the third largest charitable foundation in the world, holding $69 billion in assets as of 2020. The primary stated goals of the foundation are to enhance healthcare and reduce extreme poverty across the world, and to expand educational opportunities and access to information technology in the U.S. Key individuals of the foundation include Warren Buffett, chief executive officer Mark Suzman, and Michael Larson.
Narendra Damodardas Modi is an Indian politician serving as the current prime minister of India since 26 May 2014. Modi was the chief minister of Gujarat from 2001 to 2014 and is the member of parliament (MP) for Varanasi. He is a member of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), a right-wing Hindu nationalist paramilitary volunteer organisation. He is the longest-serving prime minister outside the Indian National Congress.
The Gates Cambridge Scholarship is an international postgraduate award for students to study at the University of Cambridge. The scholarship is extremely competitive with around 1.3% of applicants receiving an award in recent years.
VillageReach is a registered 501(c)(3) that works with governments to solve health care delivery challenges in low-resource communities. Its headquarters are in Seattle, Washington, with international offices in Mozambique, Malawi, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Africa. The VillageReach approach includes developing, testing, implementing and scaling new systems, technologies and programs that improve health outcomes. This is achieved by extending the reach and enhancing the quality of health care. The benefits are manifested through supply chain and logistics improvements, information and communication technology, human resources for health, private sector engagement and advocacy.
Global Citizen, also known as Global Poverty Project, is an international education and advocacy organization that seeks to catalyze the movement to end extreme poverty and promote social justice and equity through the lens of intersectionality. The organization was founded by Hugh Evans, Michael Sheldrick, Simon Moss and Wei Soo, and aims to increase the number and effectiveness of people taking action to support the cause.
The Foundation for the National Institutes of Health (FNIH) is a not-for-profit, 501(c)(3) charitable organization established by the US Congress in 1990. Located in North Bethesda, MD, the FNIH raises private-sector funds, and creates and manages alliances with public and private institutions in support of the mission of the National Institutes of Health (NIH).
Arjun Singh Sethi is an American civil and political rights writer, human rights lawyer, and adjunct professor of law at Georgetown University Law Center and Vanderbilt University Law School.
Narendra Modi, who is serving the Prime minister of India since 2014. The following is a timeline of the premiership from his inauguration as Prime Minister of India on 26 May 2014 till now.
The NITI Aayog serves as the apex public policy think tank of the Government of the Republic of India, and the nodal agency tasked with catalyzing economic development, and fostering cooperative federalism and moving away from bargaining federalism through the involvement of State Governments of India in the economic policy-making process using a bottom-up approach. Its initiatives include "15-year road map", "7-year vision, strategy, and action plan", AMRUT, Digital India, Atal Innovation Mission, Medical Education Reform, agriculture reforms, Indices Measuring States’ Performance in Health, Education and Water Management, Sub-Group of Chief Ministers on Rationalization of Centrally Sponsored Schemes, Sub-Group of Chief Ministers on Swachh Bharat Abhiyan, Sub-Group of Chief Ministers on Skill Development, Task Forces on Agriculture and up of Poverty, and Transforming India Lecture Series.
Realizing Increased Photosynthetic Efficiency (RIPE) is a translational research project that is genetically engineering plants to photosynthesize more efficiently to increase crop yields. RIPE aims to increase agricultural production worldwide, particularly to help reduce hunger and poverty in Sub-Saharan Africa and Southeast Asia by sustainably improving the yield of key food crops including soybeans, rice, cassava and cowpeas. The RIPE project began in 2012, funded by a five-year, $25-million dollar grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. In 2017, the project received a $45 million-dollar reinvestment from the Gates Foundation, Foundation for Food and Agriculture Research, and the UK Government's Department for International Development. In 2018, the Gates Foundation contributed an additional $13 million to accelerate the project's progress.
Hervé Berville is a French economist and politician of Renaissance (RE) who has been serving as State Secretary for the Sea in the government of successive Prime Ministers Élisabeth Borne and Gabriel Attal from 2022 to 2024. From 2017 to 2022, he was a member of the French National Assembly, representing the department of Côtes-d'Armor. He was also a spokesperson of the Renaissance Party.
Erica Armah Bra-Bulu Tandoh known by the stage name DJ Switch, is a young Ghanaian disc jockey. She is a multi talented entertainer who can also sing, rap, dance and host TV shows. She currently host Talented Kidz program on TV3. She does poetry, is an actress and delivers motivational speeches. She is the second child and the only girl among five siblings. She hails from Dadieso in the Western North Region of Ghana and attends Talented Royals International School at Weija in Accra. Her career took off when she was seven years of age. She claims she is adept at switching people's moods from sad to happy, hence the name DJ Switch.
Inside Bill's Brain: Decoding Bill Gates is a 2019 three-part documentary television series created and directed by Davis Guggenheim. The series explores the mind and motivations of Bill Gates, co-founder and former CEO of Microsoft and founder of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, together with his then-wife.
Aya Chebbi, is a Tunisian diplomat, and a pan-African and feminist activist. She became the first appointed African Union Envoy on Youth in November 2018. Appointed by the chairperson of the African Union Commission Moussa Faki in November 2018, as the youngest senior official in the history of the African Union and youngest diplomat in the chairperson's cabinet. She supports the Chairperson in addressing his thematic priority of working with and for young people and advocate to Silencing the Guns by 2020.
Bonita Sharma is a Nepali health and nutrition activist. She runs Social Changemakers and Innovators (SOCHAI) and in 2019 was listed as one of the BBC's 100 Women.
Lukas Köhler is a German politician of the Free Democratic Party (FDP) who has been serving as a member of the Bundestag from the state of Bavaria since 2017.
Global Goals Week is a shared commitment between a coalition of over 160 partners across all industries, which mobilizes annually in September to bring together communities, demand urgency, and supercharge solutions for the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). It was founded in 2016 by the United Nations Foundation, Project Everyone, and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). It is timed to coincide with the UN General Assembly "High-Level Week" in New York. The week includes events, summits, conferences, forums, workshops, pledges, and other activations in New York, around the world, and online. It usually runs alongside Climate Week NYC, the annual conference of Goalkeepers, Bloomberg Global Business Forum and many other high-level events.
Tlaleng Mofokeng is a South African physician who is the United Nations' Special Rapporteur on the Right to Health. She campaigns for universal health access and HIV care. She was named one of the BBC's 100 Women in 2021.
