Former software tycoon and entrepreneur Bill Gates spoke to The Daily Californian Monday, following a presentation to the U. California-Berkeley community about social and health inequities in poor countries and the importance of quality education.
Gates, former chief executive officer of Microsoft Corporation and current co-chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, gave a speech at Zellerbach Hall titled “Giving Back: Finding the Best Way to Make a Difference” before opening up the floor for questions from audience members.
In the interview with The Daily Californian, Gates elaborated on the goals of the foundation and spoke about the importance of universities in combating global problems.
The Daily Californian: It seems that there are two central goals for the foundation-global health and assistance to low-income minority students. How do these two different objectives coalesce into a common purpose for the foundation?
Bill Gates: We decided we’d go after the greatest global inequity, which was health and the related things, and then we decided we’d go after the thing we think is most important for the U.S., which is for education, better teachers, scholarships. … So there’s really two big things-what the U.S. needs and what would make the world more equitable.
DC: There are other organizations out there that do similar types of work. Is there something that differentiates the foundation from other organizations?
BG: Well, the more people who get involved in these causes the better. We love having foundations, funding research on teacher excellence, or getting great online courses up there, because it’s all complimentary. Somebody funds the creation of a vaccine that gets delivered through a common vaccine system. Unfortunately, in global health, the amount of philanthropy is fairly modest. There isn’t much. I remember an early malaria grant we gave, which doubled the amount of money being spent on malaria. … We are fairly unique simply because of the scale of resources we’re putting into it.
DC: What can university students do to advance the organization’s goals?
BG: Well, universities as a whole are where a lot of the science advances are coming, whether it’s understanding medicine or biology or governance or policies, and you know, part of the reason universities are so great at looking at things in new and different ways-it’s their diversity, it’s the young people, intelligence … the new thinking that you bring to these problems. Then, of course, once you’re done at the university, there’s a question of what do you choose to work on in your full time, or with part of your time, or just your voice politically, or donations …
DC: How important is research like that done here at the University of California, Berkeley in combating these problems?
BG: Well, Berkeley’s a fantastic university … It’s phenomenal, and so our foundation is often giving grants to Berkeley to help advance the science, help us understand whether it’s soil mapping or disease or some of the innovative things being done with cell phones. So this is a great university, and it was actually pretty early in recognizing that these global needs, that exposing students to that, would directly drive innovations … Every university can keep doing more, but it’s been on the forefront.
DC: Does the work at Microsoft translate in any way to the work you do here at the foundation? How do the skills or stresses translate over from one to the other?
BG: Well, there’s a lot in common. Picking great scientists and backing them to do hard things that people don’t think can get done, having clear metrics, getting the word out about great things, getting people excited, doing that on a global basis-those are things that I bring from my Microsoft experience. Now, our delivery conditions are much more difficult. We’re not selling through a computer shop. We’re taking vaccines (to) the very poorest parts of the world … That’s far more challenging, and so we’ve got to mix skills … I’ve gotten exposed to a lot of new things, but the basic idea of what does a project look like, optimism about innovation, I think that’s helped me a lot to do the foundation work.