William Henry Gates III is an American businessman and philanthropist best known for co-founding the software company Microsoft with his childhood friend Paul Allen. During his career at Microsoft,Gates held the positions of chairman,chief executive officer (CEO),president,and chief software architect,while also being its largest individual shareholder until May 2014. He was a pioneer of the microcomputer revolution of the 1970s and 1980s.
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.
Medina is a city in the Eastside region of King County,Washington,United States. The mostly residential city is on a peninsula in Lake Washington,on the opposite shore from Seattle,bordered by Clyde Hill and Hunts Point to the east and water on all other sides. The city's population was 2,915 at the 2020 census. Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos,along with a number of billionaires and executives for tech companies,have homes in Medina.
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 second 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.
Lakeside School is a private school located in Seattle,Washington,for grades 5–12. As of 2024,school review website Niche ranked Lakeside School as the best private high school in Washington state and the 52nd best private high school in the United States. Niche also ranked Lakeside as the 28th best high school for STEM in the United States.
William Henry Gates II,better known as Bill Gates Sr.,was an American attorney,philanthropist,and civic leader. He was the founder of the law firm Shidler McBroom &Gates,and also served as president of both the Seattle King County and Washington State Bar associations. He was the father of Bill Gates,co-founder of Microsoft.
Patricia Q. Stonesifer is an American executive. From June 2023 to January 2024,she was the interim CEO of The Washington Post and is on the board of Amazon. She began her career in various executive roles at Microsoft before becoming the founding CEO of the Bill &Melinda Gates Foundation. She previously was the president and CEO of Martha's Table,a Washington D.C.-based non-profit that provides community-based solutions to poverty.
The Seattle Center Monorail is an elevated straddle-beam monorail line in Seattle,Washington,United States. The 0.9-mile (1.4 km) monorail runs along 5th Avenue between Seattle Center and Westlake Center in Downtown Seattle,making no intermediate stops. The monorail is a major tourist attraction but also operates as a regular public transit service with trains every ten minutes running for up to 16 hours per day. It was constructed in eight months at a cost of $4.2 million for the 1962 Century 21 Exposition,a world's fair hosted at Seattle Center. The monorail underwent major renovations in 1988 after the southern terminal was moved from its location over Pine Street to inside the Westlake Center shopping mall.
Jim Compton was a member of the Seattle City Council,first elected in 1999. He announced his resignation in December 2005 to teach at American University in Cairo as well as Romania.
Westlake Park is a 0.1-acre (400 m2) public plaza in Downtown Seattle,Washington,United States. It was designed by Robert Mitchell Hanna.
Gary Faye Locke is an American politician,attorney,and former diplomat from the state of Washington. Locke served as the 21st governor of Washington from 1997 to 2005,where he was the first Chinese-American governor as well as the first Asian American governor in the continental U.S. During the Obama administration,Locke served as Secretary of Commerce from 2009 to 2011,and as Ambassador to China from 2011 to 2014,the first Chinese American to serve in the role.
Marilyn Strickland is an American politician who is the U.S. representative from Washington's 10th congressional district. The district is based in the state capital of Olympia,and also includes much of eastern Tacoma.
Kshama Sawant is an Indian-American politician and economist who served on the Seattle City Council from 2014 to 2024. She was a member of Socialist Alternative,the first and only member of the party to date to be elected to public office.
The Federal Reserve Bank Building,also known as the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco,Seattle Branch,served as the offices of the Seattle branch of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco for over 50 years,from 1951 to 2008.
The More Hall Annex,formerly the Nuclear Reactor Building,was a building on the campus of the University of Washington (UW) in Seattle,Washington,United States,that once housed a functional nuclear research reactor. It was inaugurated in 1961 and shut down in 1988,operating at a peak of 100 kilowatts thermal (kWt),and was officially decommissioned in 2007.
Debora Juarez is an American lawyer and politician who served as the president of the Seattle City Council. She was first elected in 2015 to represent the 5th district. A member of the Blackfeet Nation,she was the first Native American person elected to the council.
The 2020 Washington lieutenant gubernatorial election was held on November 3,2020,to elect the lieutenant governor of Washington concurrently with the 2020 Washington elections. The top-two primary was held on August 4,and Democrats Denny Heck and Marko Liias advanced to the general election,which Heck won.
Sam Cho is an American politician and entrepreneur based in Seattle,Washington serving as a commissioner of the Port of Seattle. Prior to serving as a commissioner,he was founder and CEO of Seven Seas Export,a political appointee in the Obama administration,and a staffer for a member of the Washington State Senate and United States Congress. Cho was elected to the Seattle Port Commission in 2019,becoming the only minority port commissioner at that time. He took his oath of office in two languages,English and Korean,as a tribute to his family's immigrant roots.
The 2021 Seattle mayoral election was held on November 2,2021,to elect the Mayor of Seattle. It was won by former Seattle City Council President Bruce Harrell,who defeated then-current President Lorena González;both candidates had advanced from a nonpartisan primary election on August 3.
