Why Melinda French Gates is Betting On Women in Politics, Business and Tech

Was the last time we saw each other, was that at the Recode conference?

Yes, that's where you were impressing me.

And I actually turned to your ex-husband and I said, I like you 10% more because of her.

And he goes, well, how much do you like me?

I go, 10% now. Good for you.
I know. It's on.
Hi, everyone.

From New York Magazine and the Vox Media Podcast Network, this is On with Kara Swisher, and I'm Kara Swisher. Today, I'm talking to Melinda French Gates, who I've known for a very long time.
She's one of the top philanthropists in the world, an accomplished businesswoman, and a leading global advocate for women and girls. And in the past few years, she's also become a force in democratic politics.
Melinda is the author of a new book called The Next Day, which takes readers through some of the most important transitions in her life, including the death of a friend, becoming a mother, going through a very public divorce with Bill Gates, and leaving the Gates Foundation, which she co-founded with him, in order to focus on her own philanthropic efforts in her organization, Pivotal Ventures. After decades of running some of those consequential philanthropic programs in the world, she has an encyclopedic knowledge of the trickiest issues in the sector, including what's happening in the government, which has cut back programs significantly.
I'm excited to talk to her because she has a wide perspective that's important to understand in this time of change. Our expert question for Melinda comes

from my close friend and former partner, Walt Mossberg, who's known Melinda for even longer

than I have. So stick around.
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Dealer sets final price. Let's start off.
Let's start off with politics. Get it out of the way.
You endorsed a presidential candidate for the first time this summer, then President Biden, and after he withdrew, then Vice President Harris. Elon Musk, who I've had some wrangling with of late, subtweeted you that might be the downfall of Western civilization.
In your announcement, you wrote that women deserve a leader who cares about their ability to freely and fully participate in a functioning democracy. Where are we from when you said that, that idea of American danger becoming an illiberal democracy or worse? I think we're in turbulent times now, in turbulent waters.
You know, like I never, never would have guessed that USAID would essentially be folded. And that is an organization I know incredibly well and worked alongside of for 20 plus years.
And, you know, it was endorsed by Republican and Democratic administrations because they saw that people could live where they were if they had good health and they had peace and some chance for prosperity. And so to see that, you know, 16 million women won't have access to maternal health services because of that pullback, how does that make us look better? How does that help us with peace? 17 million more cases of malaria, which also means, hey, our chances of getting malaria are just that much higher also.
I mean, so to have all these administrations that believed in this, yes, I agree that there were things that could have been trimmed at the edges and there were places that you should look. But to just flat out say we're ending that department, wow.
Just wow. Talk about your experience with them.
This is with the Gates Foundation, correct? So talk about how you interacted with them. So I traveled with the Gates Foundation.
I was lucky enough to travel for over 25 years. I was out in low-income countries at least three times a year all over the world.
Probably I was on the continent of Africa over 30 times. USAID would be there and people knew of the organization because there would be whole bags of grain and of food and they knew that the U.S.
was being generous. Or take PEPFAR, which was administered, is still administered.
It's one of the things that's left of USAID. I was there when the first clinics got set up.
Were they efficient at the beginning? No. Were they efficient five years in and integrated into the health system? Much more so.
And we started to see the rates of HIV declining because of that. So these programs, the President's Malaria Initiative, started by George W.
Bush, cases of malaria came down. USAID was out there making sure malaria tests went out to people, making sure there were treatments in clinics.
And again, the U.S. brand was stamped on these things.
People knew of the U.S. and what we were doing.
You guys were, you did a lot of malaria. Obviously, malaria is one of your signature causes.
But I think you told me that you learned to work with the government, had a better appreciation for what it was doing despite problems. If you had to say what had to be reformed, what would you say? And not just liking the U.S., but like showing how we can do things for people around the globe, essentially.
Yeah, I think some of the reforms that were needed in that particular department really had to do with there was probably about

maybe 5%, 8% where you'd say, we haven't really measured that in a long time. And I don't know

if that's effective anymore. I think there could have been a lot more work done again on maternal

health services and making sure that the system in these countries was working for women. Often,

we would go in as a government and make sure the supplies were there. But, you know, was the HR system working? Should we have bolstered up the HR system a little bit better so they had the right auxiliary nurse midwife working there, right? Or the healthcare worker.
We had lots of learnings in global health, many, many, many. And it just would take USAID a little bit longer to implement than you would have liked.
But my gosh, in terms of the good that was being done, I would say 90% of what USAID was doing was effective and making change in people's lives. Did you think about talking to Trump about this? I have not talked to Trump about this, and it's a done deal, so there's no point in it at this point.

Because you don't think you could appeal to him? Because a lot of it is appealing to him, right? At least having dinner or whatever it takes. A lot of people are doing that.
I interacted with him in the first administration and made an appeal on family planning that he made look like it was going to be changed in the direction I'd hoped for. And in fact, the opposite happened.
So no, I don't feel I could be effective there, but I feel like I can be effective on the Hill. And it is worth me still calling Congress people, which I do on both sides of the aisle, because I believe in bipartisan legislation.
And what is the reaction you get when you go around? Do you think it's still useful to do so? Because the Republicans feel captive at this point. Right.
But I think it's worth finding the places we do know, and I'm not going to name them, but which senators even on the Republican side still care about some of these family issues, the child tax credit,

the potential, you know, it's not going to be now, paid family medical leave, the caregiving. I also talked to them about the cuts in Medicaid.
Again, I'm sure there is room to make changes there, but drastic changes really quickly, to me, that makes no sense. And what do they say to you when you say, what are you doing? It depends on which senator you talk to.

Some of them have ideas and are really trying to, you know, play the game, but also push for what they believe is right for their state. And I respect that.
Right. Talk about what's your donor strategy for the next three and a half years.
What are you looking for in candidates? I look for candidates who have similar values to me. And so one of the things I've been focused on now for five years and will continue to focus on, and maybe even more so, are the state houses.
There are 7,000 seats in our state legislature. They move a ton of policy and a lot of money that affect people in those states.
So I support candidates who are like-minded. For instance, when we couldn't get a paid family medical leave policy, the partners that I work with and I at the federal level, we missed it by one vote because of Joe Manchin.
But when we couldn't get it there, we continue to advance our work at the state level. We now have 13 states in the District of Columbia with very good paid family medical leave policies, and they get better all the time because the states learn from one another.
So I look at also these state houses as being places where you can affect change, these leaders can, and they're great training ground for the Hill in D.C. And so making sure we bring down the barriers for women to get those positions in state houses and we help advance the causes that I look there.
And what about abortion rights? This is something back in 2014 you wrote in a blog post that you struggled with the issue of abortion, decide not to engage, but now you are fully engaged in that. Because I never thought I'd see the law ruled back.
I mean, to have, I have two young granddaughters who are, you know, age two and under.

To know that they have fewer rights than I have, that just makes no sense.

Now, you were practicing Catholic and you read a lot about your Catholicism,

Catholic upbringing in the book.

I happen to be Catholic too.

I'm not a practicing Catholic.

How do you make the argument?

Joe Biden had the same issue. Many people have religious beliefs, and they have to figure out how to weigh them.
Talk a little bit about it, because you discuss it in the book, the upbringing you had. Yeah, so I definitely grew up Catholic, went to Catholic school all the way K through 12th grade.
Luckily, in high school, I had a set of liberal nuns, Ursuline nuns, who taught us. Oh, they're the best.
They are. They taught us we could question our faith, right? And we could question the leaders in power.
Even my parents petitioned the church at one point because they weren't bringing in the laws from Vatican II and implementing them in our parish. And so, I felt I could push back on the hierarchy, but then as I was out traveling for so many years and talking to families, men and women, who knew about contraceptives, knew that if they spaced the births of their children, the woman was more likely to survive the childbirth and the children were likely to be more healthy because they could feed them, they could educate them.
And so I just, I couldn't square that circle between my faith that didn't believe in contraceptives and what I knew to be true in the developing world. And I finally decided, you know, I need to speak what I know is true because I believe in the dignity of life and I believe that we shouldn't have, lose babies just literally because they're coming too soon and too often for a woman.
How do you, what do you say to people who think abortion is immoral? Because you're making a larger argument and they, these forces of what I would call retrograde have, have really gotten very powerful. But most Americans believe that law should be left on the books, even Catholics.
Over 60% of Americans believe we had a law that should have stayed where it was. How is the fight going now? And what is the first step for someone like you who is a big donor in that regard? Well, I'm still putting a lot of money into reproductive rights across the board, but I'm much more focused now on the United States.
I never thought I would need to be, but I am. And I really support the local on the ground work that's going on to make sure young girls know about their bodies, have rights to contraceptive and know about their rights, but also know where they can go to get contraceptives.
And you know, Planned Parenthood is struggling quite a bit now, especially because of the attacks by the Trump administration. And the rollback of the Title 10 money.
That makes no sense to me. I was down in Louisiana, I guess it was about eight weeks ago now, six weeks ago, talking to doctors and many people in the health care clinics and the chaos that's been caused and the uncertainty about what can we counsel a young girl on? Where should we send her? What can we do? Will I lose my license? Am I even allowed to have mythopristine, right? I mean, these are just questions that we shouldn't be asking in this day and age.
And when you are doing this, it is up to people like you now and not the government. I mean, you planted your flag, I would say the center left side of the divide.
I don't know how you describe yourselves, but some Democrats don't like the idea of billionaires at all. Bernie Sanders has said for years there should be no billionaires.
Talk about this idea of all kinds of people on both sides. How should the party fix the rift between progressive leaders that are skeptical of wealth, like Bernie AOC, Elizabeth Warren, and people like you, like Reid Hoffman, Michael Bloomberg.
Now, especially now the Democrats are no longer seen as the party, the working class. But this idea that you have to wait in here to take the place of what government had previously done.
Well, okay, first of all, billionaires aren't a monolith. Correct.
I try to explain that to people. Yeah, billionaires aren't a monolith.
We're not all the same. Some of us are philanthropic.
Some are not. Some wield their power in very unusual ways, I would say.
But we are where we are as a society. And you can argue that we got here because of our tax policy.
So really the tax policy probably needs to change. But given that we are where we are, I don't think it's worth vilifying billionaires and making them all seem like they're one category, right? But the other thing to know is that philanthropic dollars can never, never fill the hole of government dollars.
There just aren't enough, right? So the USAID rolled back with $75-plus billion, just one department, right? You roll back parts of Medicaid, we're talking hundreds of millions of dollars in various states. So philanthropic capital can't fill that gap.
All the philanthropic sector can do is be that catalytic wedge. We can create change, we can run experiments where you wouldn't want our government to use taxpayer dollars to take those kinds of risks.
And once we prove something out and we've got good research, then it's really up to government to scale it up. And so that's how I see the sector, and I see it as part of a larger ecosystem that is government, private sector, philanthropy, and then NGOs and civil society.
When you think about being in that role, and I agree with you,

they're not a monolith, but you do raise your profile, right? Especially when things like conspiracy theories and online disinformation are inescapable fact of life. At one point, 44% of Republicans believed your ex-husband, Bill Gates, wanted to use COVID vaccines to implant microchips in people.
Your daughter, Phoebe, has said that she had friends cut her off because of that conspiracy theory. When you are in the public light like this, how do you fight the disinformation around yourself or on these topics, especially in social media platforms, have pretty much given up on content moderation? Right.
Well, the only way I know to fight back on that is to be myself and to be my most authentic self and to state what my values are and to live my values. and people can decide they have different values than me.
They don't like me. They do like me.
But I'm at the point in my life, I'm 60 years old,

where I'm kind of like, take me or leave me.

So I'm willing to take some criticism.

But what I know to be true after spending so much time in these fields and talking to women and talking to men and learning about people's lives around the world, somebody has got to speak up. Look, it would be so much easier for me to just go, I don't know, live my life somewhere where nobody knew where I was on a beach somewhere, I guess.
Put it that way. But I believe in certain things and I believe that we will be better off in society when we make it easier for women to step into their full power.
And part of me doing this book was to say, look, you may see me one way, maybe, you know, but here's actually who I am. So decide what you think of me after reading my book, right? We'll be back in a minute.
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In the book, you talk about the death of a friend of yours, right? This is a book, The Next Day. You write, pointing about the death of John, a former colleague who had become one of your best friends.
You touch on the science of grief. When someone we love dies, our brain is forced to adapt to the new reality, and that rewiring might actually lead to positive growth.
Talk a little bit about that, because there is a moment, right, where you shift rather significantly. Well, I think both having children, and when John died, our son Rory was just born.
We named his middle name after our friend John Nielsen. And, you know, I realized, I mean, John, we lost John so young.
He was in his late 30s. He left behind three very young children who I still know are now grown adults.
And I realized, my gosh, you know, we just don't know how long we're here. And you can either just let that sort of roll past you and six months later you've just moved on, or you can decide to pause and that there are lessons to learn.
And I decided to pause and say, wait a minute, what do I want my life to look like on the last day? And if you think about that a lot and then you work backwards from it and you say, my life needs to lead up. My last day, I hope people will say, you know, about me, she was loved by her family and friends.
They loved her. She loved them.
They all knew it. And she made some meaningful change in the world.
And so if you say that's how you want to live your life, and you have no idea, is it tomorrow? Is it 30 years from now? You start to back up from there and say, okay, I need to actually be part of creating change. And because I was raising children, as they got into middle school later, and I started to realize I'm telling them to use their voice.
I'm telling them to stand up to the bully, stand up for a friend. I realize if I want to be a whole integrated person, I need to also be using my voice.
So one of the things you talk about, you always want to be a mother. In the book you write, at the center of my heaving chest pulsing from my hammering heart was a force that hadn't existed there before.
A maternal love so primal and ferocious was almost violent. I know the feeling.
I feel that. I keep having children.
Best thing I ever did. People are always surprised when I say that.
Your oldest child became a mother in, Jen became a mother in 2023. And last year, your youngest daughter graduated from Stanford.
Your kids are adults. You've transitioned to a new role as a grandmother.
Talk about the primal and ferocious maternal love because I think it has been an important part of your evolving. I think we don't, I will say I, and I'd be interested in your point of view on this, I didn't know how primal it was until I had Jen.
I write about this earthquake that happened and I'm screaming to my mother, you know, cover the baby, cover the baby. I have stitches.
I've run from the bed. I don't even know that I'm at the top of the stairs screaming at my mom.
Of course, my mom knew what to do in the middle of an earthquake, cover the baby. But I realized, oh my God, like, I love this person so much I would give my life for them.
And it changes you. If you let having children change you and don't just say, oh, I'm going to live my life the way I've been living it I think it can change you for the better as a person I don't know why why are you why do people are you surprised when they say that that's when you say that's the best thing you've ever done I am they I don't know they have a version of me I was like I just I think they're surprised that I think it's the most important I've wanted to have a kid since I was 15 years old and of course being gay I couldn't necessarily at the time back then back when I think we're surprised that I think it's the most important.
I've wanted to have a kid since I was 15 years old. And, of course, being gay, I couldn't necessarily at the time, back then, back when.

I think we're around the same age.

And so I always felt like I was.

I have one of the stories I wrote about in my memoir was a onesie I bought for my son when I was 18 years old, you know, before that, which is really kind of interesting.

So I was very aware of what I wanted.

It's been the most important part of my life, obviously. What is your role as a grandmother now? My role as a grandmother is one is to support my oldest daughter and remind her that she is a very good parent and she's good enough because she's in her residency and she has two little girls, you know, basically age two and under.
So to remind her she's doing a great job, which she is, and that they're thriving. And it's to just play with those grandchildren.
And it's delightful in every possible way. So one of the things you also read about a book is The Perfect Marriage.
People always think about marriages as like perfect. I, too, have gotten a divorce.
Divorce is obviously a big transition. And you write about this in the lead up to yours in the book.
The New York Times published a deeply disturbing article that raised serious questions about Bill's conduct, questions that suggested he betrayed not only our marriage, but also my values. And it talked about his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein.
Talk a little bit about this, because obviously, given your dedication to women and girls, the questions raised by the article do go to the heart of your life's work. Well, first of all, I didn't feel like I could put a book out about transitions without talking about divorce, because mine was public.
People knew I went through it, right? And it would be disingenuous not to. And at the same time, I don't want to bring up things.
Look, it was painful for five of us, not just me, five of us. And I don't want to bring up things.
Look, it was painful for five of us, not one, not just me, five of us. And I don't want to bring up things that are painful for the kids.
But I thought at least in writing through some of my story from my perspective, maybe people who go through divorce, they might see that there's growth and there's resilience and there's beauty that can come on the other side, even when you're in it and you do not think that. You just kind of know, I need to get this done.
And you're in a lot of pain, you know, holding out the perspective or having someone else hold out the perspective that you're going to not only be okay, but there's going to be beauty on the other side. I just thought that was important.
And your relationship now, obviously you want a relatively good relationship for the kids, I would assume, but maybe not. You know, weddings and graduations.
You know, my ex-wife, you know Megan, you know Megan. She is my, I have two new kids, I got remarried, and literally my kid's favorite person is Megan Smith.
They're like, when's Megan coming over? My wife's like, okay. I hope your wife sees that having a third person there, maybe it takes a little bit of a load off.
It's just lesbians. What can we do about it? There's nothing.
That's what I said. I'm like, lesbians, I don't know what to tell you.
She brings toys. She brings lots of toys for them.
Anyway, it's really actually very nice. So every episode we get an expert to send us a question.
Let's hear yours. It's about your book.
Hi, Melinda. It's Walt Mossberg.
When we first met decades ago, you were a product manager at Microsoft visiting me to interest me in a product called Microsoft Publisher. Since then, as you outline in the book, you've made several major transitions in your life.
And I also have reinvented myself several times, mostly arm-in-arm with my business partner, Kara. So my question is, do you advise that everyone should evaluate their life, personal and professional, periodically and reinvent themselves, even without the kind of seminal triggering event like a divorce? Great question.
I know. Walt's the best.
Walt's the best. Okay, first of all,

I want to say two things about Walt. One is to say he was brand new as a columnist at the Wall Street Journal, so much so that I felt like they gave him a closet as his office.
We were in the most tiny office, and it was uncomfortable. There was no personal space.
I think I put my laptop on top of a box. But the second thing that I'm not sure he even knows is I was getting to know Catherine Graham at that time, and I had gone to breakfast at her house.
And all of a sudden, I jumped up and I looked at the time and I said, oh my gosh, Mrs. Graham, I've got to go.
I have to be at the Wall Street Journal. And she said, what time? And when I told her, she said, you'll never make it.
And she said to somebody on her household staff, pull my car out of the garage. She drove me to the Wall Street Journal and dropped me off at the front door.
And her son, Don, who I know quite well, says... Was it the station wagon? It was some red car.
I don't think it was a station wagon. But he said his mom hadn't driven in years.
Oh, wow. Oh, wow.
But she knew how important it was for me to be there on time. Right.
Right. So to Walt's question about making transitions, I think we should all try to look for places if we're lucky enough to reinvent ourselves, because I think that's where we grow in life.
That's where we learn new things. That's where we find openings in our life.
Not everybody's lucky enough that they can reinvent themselves. A lot of times they get stuck in a career or they have to go in one direction.
But I think some of the juiciest and best times of life are when you can reinvent yourself. And you have to not be afraid of it.
And how do you do that? Does it take does it take an event, as you know, to like a divorce or a death or something like that? Not necessarily. Like I had a background in computer science and economics and here I am sitting at a foundation I created with a group of top scientists in malaria, tuberculosis, HIV.
I don't know. I don't have a biology or medicine degree or global health, but I was dedicated and I learned.
And I learned deeply. I wasn't afraid to ask scary questions or dumb questions or good questions.
I learned from people in the field. I talked to other scientists.
Like, you can learn. You just, as I say to my kids, you just have to get comfortable being very uncomfortable.
It's like learning a new language. And the more you push yourself through those points in time, the easier it is to go through these transitions and these, as Walt calls them, reinventions.
So you mentioned your background in computer science and economics, which was from Duke. And then you went to Microsoft, which had a brash and tough culture, I can tell you, as you know, as I know, that made you want to quit at times.
What was it being like at Women in Tech then? And has that changed since? Are we moving backwards now that there's sort of this emphasis on hyper-masculinity? Well, I can say what it was like when I was at Microsoft. One, it was super exciting.
I wanted to be there. We knew we were changing in the world and we, by gosh, knew it, right? There were not very many technical women.
And luckily, I had enough of a grounding and a background and I knew I was a good manager. I had managed a lot of projects before I went to Microsoft in various parts of my time.

And so I had enough strength to know I could manage developers and testers. So that part I loved a lot.
The parts I didn't like were the boys debate club, which felt constant with management. Anytime I went into a meeting where there was a senior manager above me, it just felt like it was this just constant debate.
And I learned to play that game, but I didn't like that game. But I learned that I would just try being myself.
And the more I did that, one, the happier I was. And two, I could get developers, it was strange, from all over the company to come work on my teams.
And people would say, how did you get that developer from that other project over here? And I was like, I don't know, maybe they just want to work in a different culture. But it was hard, and it was tough, and there were definitely times I thought about quitting.
Now, again, performative masculinity is really back in tech. There was a slight lull, although I would say slight would be the most I would say.
Mark Zuckerberg wants more masculine energy. In January, Elon Musk shared a post on X saying that masculinity is back.
Jeff Bezos, I don't even want to talk about the jacked and cowboy hats thing, but whatever. He's performing in some fashion.
Pivotal Ventures that you run is partly, I want to talk about the VC fund, it in projects that help advance women and women's rights. And like any VC, the goal is obviously to make money.
Talk a little bit about the fund because you're going a different direction. Obviously, you see an opportunity here.
What's your main takeaway after doing this work? There are a lot of great ideas that are not being funded. And they're not being funded just because of the bias in the system or because we've gotten used to funding certain types of businesses.

So what I'm looking forward to is absolutely I'm making a return and I want to make a return.

But what I'm looking for is I'm on a long play here, a 10 or 15 year play.

Because if I can prove out that this works, one thing I do know is nobody, especially guys, don't like to leave money on the table, as they say. And so I think once we make this a norm and people realize, oh, there are lots of businesses we should be looking at in funding, then other people will crowd in behind.
So that's my thesis and we'll see if it plays out, but so far so good. So when you do that, do you feel like you're, you know, you don't want to, of course, not, I love everyone who women who do this are like, I don't want to be just pegged here because you want to be in on the big deals, obviously, the open AIs and different things like that.
But a lot of the tone, as we just discussed, has that idea of not focusing on women's things. Elon Musk recently said that the fundamental weakness in Western civilization is empathy.
Peter Thiel infamously lamented women's suffrage. He wrote that women who vote

have, quote, rendered the notion of capitalist democracy into an oxymoron.

We circle back to the issue of this hypermasculinity. What's the best strategy for

women you're funding who want to succeed in the industry when many founders and funders have,

I would say, open disdain, in some case, trying to push back on traits considered to be feminine?

You got to keep pushing forward and you've got to just find the funders who are willing to fund you. And yes, it's not going to be that pack of people you just mentioned, but you got to push forward.
And again, the best way to push back is to succeed in business. Like one of the reasons we're seeing this gigantic shift in women's sports all of a sudden is you're finally starting to see more women in more sports really making it.
And the difference between men and women in these sports is becoming more and more slim. That's when you see societal shift.
And so it's why, you know, we have to invest in media that portrays lots of different types of people that look like society. We have to invest in sports for women.
We have to invest in tech because that's changing society. We have to get more women, as I said, in politics and in state houses.
We have to push forward on all those places. So yes, this is a moment in time that doesn't look particularly good because of some of the people that you named.
But look, I'm playing the long game here. We all have to play the long game.
Do you ever feel you have to be part of that kind of like, I got to get in this deal, I got to get in that, I got to go for TikTok or whatever, whatever it happens to be the aggressive moment. You don't feel like you have to be part of those.
I'm not afraid. Here's the thing.
Some people got to be at that particular deal table because

they're afraid. Like, oh my God, what will it say if I'm not there? I'm just not afraid.

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Let me ask you a little bit about your philosophy for philanthropy and how it gels with these investments ideas. You describe your approach in philanthropy as somewhat in between a data-driven model that

you champion at the Gates Foundation and a trust-based model that Mackenzie Scott has

adopted in her philanthropy work. For people who don't know, explain the difference between those

two approaches. Well, you can do philanthropy in so many different ways.
So first of all,

it's great, I think, whenever anybody's giving away money, even if it's $100 or $1,000, right? On sort of one end of the spectrum, people have sort of drawn it as trust-based philanthropy, which is more typical of what Mackenzie is doing. And I have great respect for her, which is she is saying, look, I see a broad set of leaders out there who've been doing these types of things for quite a while.
And to me, I mean, she does have measurement tools that she's looking at how they're advancing society in the way she cares about. And then she funds them and she trusts them to use those funds in the way they most see fit.
The other end of the spectrum could be what you call. I mean, if it was purely, some people, data-driven, which is, okay, for every grant or every, you know, $10,000, $500,000, are we getting a return? Are we seeing another life saved? Are we seeing another child in school? You can never be completely data-driven.
You just can't, because you can't measure every dollar that goes out the door. That I know.
And quite frankly, on the data-driven side, one of the things I've learned is that, look, for every data point, that's a human life. And so you do have to kind of decide what do you value.
And so I'm somewhere kind of in between those two models, I would say. I'm certainly collecting data from people that I'm giving money to.
but some of them, you know, I am letting them run pretty free. Like I, there are 12 people, global people that I gave $20 million each to, they can use 5 million on their own organization, but the other 15, they have to figure out who they're going to fund and what for what purpose.
And believe me, I'm going to go back and understand what they funded and why they funded, but I don't believe sitting in Seattle or in the United States that anybody on my team or I have all the best ideas. And I think people who are out closer to the work have a lot of the better ideas that can advance society.
I do kind of love Mackenzie just dropping the money. Goodbye.
Here you go. Don't put my name on anything.
Did that kind of shock you all when she started doing that? No, I know her. That didn't surprise me at all.
No, no, I just love it. I just was like, it's so like her, right? It's so like her.
And think about it. The other thing is she's an extraordinarily talented writer.
Extraordinarily. Yes.
She's writing her own story in philanthropy. And when she wants to tell you what she's doing, rather than going out and doing all the media stuff, even like you and I are doing right now, she writes about it.
Yeah. And she writes with fidelity and it's beautiful.
Who else do you look to in philanthropy that you say, wow, I like what they're doing? You know, I've always admired Warren Buffett. It's hard not to just because he's such a man.
She's so enjoyable to talk to. A lot of different people.
What I'm more struck by is the selfishness of a lot of people, right? And their lack of philanthropy when they have so much money. But I think the quieter stuff, I like the quieter stuff a little more because you just don't know.
But I don't mind the loud stuff too because it points to things. Speaking of which, because it gets attention, right? So some of the specific work you've been doing, last year, Pivotal announced it was committing $1 billion through 2026 to advance women's power globally.
Part of that, you're donating $45 million to help increase women's representation in AI and tech. Only about 30% of the AI workforce is made up of women, and the percentage of women in senior executive roles is even smaller.
So talk about this, because this is the next sort of gold rush happening right now. So what's the best way to increase those numbers, and why has it been such a challenge? Well, so AI is—look, tech changed society profoundly.
You know that. I know that.
We all see it. AI is going to change society in an even more profound way to the point that we don't even know yet.
But because the same types of workers who worked in tech are the same types of workers who worked in AI, and there was already not enough women going into tech, you're seeing not enough women go into artificial intelligence. And to me, that is tragic.
And we have to change it because that's where society is being built. I mean, we are building the pipes now and we're baking the bias just like we did in the Constitution.
We bake the bias into the system and look how long it did take for women to get the vote, right? And minorities in our country. So what can we do? There are lots of organizations who are gleaning the lessons, for instance, of the universities.
If we miss a girl in tech, let's say in middle school or high school, there are universities that have learned lessons about how do you attract and keep them after that first freshman class. And so we can take those learnings, and our partners are, and spreading those to other universities and helping girls understand these are not only high paying fields, they're creative.
You don't have to already know how to code, even though you may think you did. Like you actually put kind of the boys who've been coding for a long time, you move them into another class and you have girls with a very supportive environment.
They thrive and they keep going from there. So we can do that.
We can do their organizations like Breakthrough AI, who are doing more mentorship and sponsorship. We can help girls get their very first internship in AI.
That makes an enormous difference in terms of the trajectory of their career. It's also the safety issues.
One of the lines I always said is the reason tech hasn't been safe is because the people who made it don't feel unsafe. You know, they've never felt unsafe a day in their lives.
And so therefore they don't think about safety. And the second part around AI, I think about it a lot, is why men seem particularly excited about it, is because it's like having a baby.
You know what I mean? They're making people. They're making things in a way that they can't do in the real world.
It's just a weird thing when I think about all the time. I'm like, AI is the next version of people in a lot of ways, to a lot of them.
Either that or maybe it's that. I don't know.
I haven't thought of it in that particular way. Or maybe it's the, hey, we will have the power in society.
That's right. I mean, it is the engine.
It is the massive engine of change. Yeah, absolutely.
So one of the things that's difficult is these new anti-DEI policies. One of the pitiful stated goals is to make the tech industry more inclusive, and the administration has managed to scare a lot of public organizations and private sector companies into obeying in advance, scrapping any programs that sound even like they might help women or people of color.
How are you dealing with this? A lot of people have just acquiesced and removed this stuff from their websites even. My work continues.
Yeah. You're not going to be doing that.
I know what my values are. My mom used to say to me as I was growing up, set your own agenda or someone else will.
I know society is better off when women are in positions of power. How do you help organizations that are afraid of losing funding because of DEI? You stand with them.
You let them know their work is important and that you believe in it. And willing to litigate if necessary? We'll see.
We'll see. So I'm going to finish up with a couple, two more questions.
You have a very heartfelt section in the book where you write about how your dad encouraged. Let's talk about men, too, because dads are important and yours obviously was.
Super important. Yeah, and there's a quote by Malala's dad.
I love him. By the way, I know him pretty well.
He's been some time with us. And he said, women's voices are the most important in feminism, but in patriarchal societies, a father's voice is perhaps the next most important tool to galvanize change.
He has been so important to her, 100, but you could see that. His support for her was critical to her courage, I think, in many ways.
Pivotal has given about $20 million in grants to both Richard Reeves and Gary Barker, two leaders in the organizations that work with men and boys. Scott Galloway, who I do pivot with, is coming out with a book about trying to redefine masculinity against the sort of what I would call toxic masculinity that the tech bros are pushing, some of them.
Talk about this crisis in masculinity and they're trying to tackle and ultimately how it affects women. I'd love to understand why you gave them this money.
Yeah, because I think we're seeing through the research that boys are having trouble finding the male role models, the positive male role models in their life, the teacher, the coach, the other dad who cares about them. And as young men fall behind and are not graduating at the same rates at college, and women are starting to accelerate past them in some fields, you're starting to see, okay, well, where do they go? They go to these toxic, more toxic places.
And so I really applaud the work that Richard Reeve and Gary Barker are doing, where they're trying to say, okay, what do we need to do in society? How do we create these role models? How do we give men a different way of being in society so that we advance everybody in society? This shouldn't be a zero-sum game that men, women rise and men fall down. We want them to rise together.
And quite frankly, the male suicide rates are just horrific, right? And even when you look at adolescent mental health, the numbers are going in the wrong direction for girls and boys. And that's tragic.
So you explore the concept of liminal space in the book. There's an intermediate zone between where you've been and where you're going.
I guess the green room of life. The country feels it's in a liminal space right now or something.
We're undergoing a transition. We don't know where we're going.
It feels very chaotic. It feels very uncertain.
It feels hateful. How should Americans deal with that uncertainty that comes with being in this liminal space without succumbing to anxiety or hopelessness? I think everyone I meet is anxious and hopeless.
And

you're writing a book about not being, and it's great to change. So what's your advice? Focus on the local.
Absolutely. Write to your senator, call, email your congressperson, use your voice and tell them what you think about these policies.
Protest if you feel like the right role for you is to protest also, but then focus locally. Find points of light and hope in your local community because there's so much still going on to help people who are homeless, to help the young kid who needs mentoring or needs help with their homework.
I mean, when you do those things, if you go serve food in a food line or you come in contact with people who aren't as fortunate as you, you learn something from that. And guess what? You feel better because you're in concert working with them and others to change the world.
And it starts there. All right, so my very last question, you started your book with a Mary Oliver quote.
And obviously the most famous one of Mary Oliver's tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life? I guess I'll change that. With the rest of your wild and precious life, what do you plan to do? Exactly what I'm doing now.
Keep fighting on behalf of others. Make the world better for my granddaughters and hopefully other grandchildren maybe to come, but just to, you know, help repair the world.
We all need it. And I'm doing that day in and day out.
And I really love the work. Why is it just women in tech doing this? You and Reid Hoffman.
That's it. I swear to God, it's really amazing that it's mostly women doing this.
Yeah. Well, hopefully we can find more women and like-minded men.
Yes, that would be great. Anyway, thank you so much.
I really appreciate it. Thanks, Cara.
On with Cara Swisher is produced by Christian Castor-Russell, Kateri Yoakum, Dave Shaw, Megan Burney, Megan Kunane, and Kaylin Lynch. Nishat Kirwa is Vox Media's executive producer of audio.
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