♪ emily: she grew up melinda french in dallas, texas, a young girl who loved computers. in 1987, she landed her first job at a newly-public company called "microsoft," where she met the men would later become her husband, cofounder, bill gates. over the last three decades, bill and melinda gates have become two of the world's most prolific philanthropists and business leaders. now, melinda is investing her money and her might on empowering women everywhere, especially in technology. joining me today on bloomberg "studio 1.0," melinda gates, cofounder of the bill and melinda gates foundation. we are in texas, which is where

you are from. you were born in dallas. the second of four children. and i'm curious what it was like growing up melinda french. melinda: i was very lucky , because my parents told all four of us, "you will be college-going pure car and, we think that it was important. they explained why because of the opportunities. and they said, not only that, even though we could tell it was not going to be easy for my parents to put us through college, we will figure out a way as a family. survey they said to me, "you can choose any college in the nation that you can get into, and we will figure out a way to pay for it could emily: your father was an aerospace engineer. you also studied computers. how did you discover computers as a young girl? melinda: yeah, so i was fortunate. i went to an all-girls catholic high school. and one of the teachers there, the math teacher who i really admired a lot and worked with a lot, she went to a conference. and she saw these apple ii's had just come out.

she was so excited about them, she came to the principal, who happened to be a nun, and said, we have to get these for the girls. so she got several of the girls who were in math class and asked us if we wanted to sign up for her "new" computer class she was going to start. and that's how i got hooked. emily: you went on to duke. you got a bachelors in computer science. you got an mba at duke as well. and this is when women were better-represented among computer science students. what was your experience like? melinda: it was exciting. i mean, i loved going into it. but i did notice after i got past the freshman class, there were just fewer and fewer and fewer women. that was just how it was. i learned to just program with the guys. emily: you went on to microsoft. that is where you got your first job in 1987. paint the picture of the early years at microsoft. melinda: i was so excited when i got bes, this job, because i knew they were on the forefront, and i believed in what they were doing. because i had this technology

background, i could move up on the business side quickly to manage whole teams of coders, people in user education, marketers, program managers. i had a decision to make though , a few months after i was at the company, because it was tough. i was used to working in very all-male environments in college. but it was abrasive and combative. i thought for a while maybe i will just quit and go somewhere else. i can get a great job anywhere else. i wasn't worried about that. but, i thought, maybe there was something about me that doesn't fit. and it took me a while to realize, that no, it is this culture, that i don't want to be like that. so i tried on being myself. and actually ended up being very successful for me. emily: you met bill at microsoft. you got married in 1994, you left microsoft in 1996. you have since become one of the world's most active and generous philanthropists. and a core part of that work involved empowering women and girls. were there specific experiences or people who helped shape your thinking on women's issues in particular?

melinda: well, i have been lucky enough to travel for over 17 years in philanthropy. and i travel all over the world. i am in the developing world a lot, i'm in asia, i'm in africa. who shaped my views were the women, who i talked to on the ground. what i was hearing in their conversations at the local village level, sitting in the dirt on a mat, was the same thing i was hearing when i would hear the news in the united states about ceo underrepresentation on boards, right? of women on boards, or women ceo's. when i initially went into philanthropy, i thought, i am going to stay away from this women's issue. women in health, women's issues, maybe those were the soft issues. but i have since learned, is that those are actually the fundamental and the hard issues. if we don't solve those, we will not get major change for the world. so my aspirations and bill's aspirations, whether it is health, whether it is decision-making, whether it is economic opportunity, we will not get there as a world if we don't make the right investments in women.

emily: in computer science, women hit their peak, earning 37% of degrees in 1984. that has since plummeted to 18% and has been flat for the last decade. similar numbers when it comes to the number of jobs women are holding in this industry. you lived this. what went wrong? melinda: it looks like when the gaming industry turned, when the games became more male games, up -- whend the you think about it a early games that i played, pac-man, the adventure games, the atari games, breakout -- they were pretty gender-neutral. when you got into these very combative games that were male centered, and more and more men got into the industry, to women it just started to feel unwelcoming. so they might join it, but if they don't see similar people around them -- we know that people look for role models, but

if they don't find them, they say, well i want to get out -- so i think that that is what went wrong in the computer industry. emily: how did you encounter bias throughout your career? melinda: you know, it is interesting. i encountered it far more in industry than i did inside of microsoft. microsoft was growing by leaps and bounds when i got there. i felt like i had every opportunity open to me if i did well, if i performed well as a female. but in industry, i ran into it all the time. i would go present, and you could tell, like i would show up at a user group that is 95% , thisand it would be like woman is going to present to us? what could you possibly know about this product? as soon as i opened my mouth, it was clear i knew the product in depth, because i wasn't just there to sell it, i was managing the developers who were writing the code, for pete's sake. i knew what was in that code. i would see it on people's faces. i would bump up against it. i just would learn to push through it. emily: james damore, an engineer, was recently fired at google for writing a memo in which he claimed that men are more biologically suited to computers than women. do you think that mistaken assumption or toxic assumption is part of the problem?

melinda: i think we all have bias. i think we need to get under the hood and figure out, how do you create change by designing it out of the system? and yes, i think if you are in one culture that looks a particular way, where it looks like only a white male can get ahead, who went to an ivy league university, you are going to bake more bias into the system. where is if we design a system where there are different -- whereas if we design a system where there are different pathways in, we look at the environment, how to design it out, you look at how do you spawn innovation for women and women of color, you will start to actually change the system. emily: in the last few years, you have really recommitted to being a champion for women in technology, in particular. is there a specific moment or reason when you realized someone

reason when you realized someone had to speak up for women in tech, and that that person could be you? melinda: yes, i think a w -- just a few years ago, i had been disappointed for quite some time about numbers going down in the numbers going down in terms of computer science degrees for women, and i kept thinking that there would be a woman to speak out, or women would speak out more, and there are women speaking out. but i hadn't honestly put together my background to realizing, well, i was in that space. i have always cared about computer and tech. but wow, maybe i should use my voice behind this. because if there are places in the united states where we are bumping up against barriers and we are not getting far enough, that also has repercussions for the world. so we have to make sure low income countries, middle income countries, and high income countries all become equal for women. and i realize that this is a place where i had something that i really wanted to say. the other thing i will say about tech is i see, i not only believe, i see how tech is transforming our society. i see the changes that are happening now and that are coming. if we don't have women and underrepresented people of color at the table, we will bake into those systems bias, particularly artificial intelligence.

it is going to be such a reality the next decade and beyond. and if we bake the bias is in now, trying to undo it will be too hard. i thought, my gosh, when i saw what was going on at ai, there are no women at the table. i can name two. i said, this is a problem and we have got to do something about it. emily: why is it important to have more female engineers, female entrepreneurs, female venture capitalists? melinda: wey have a seat at the table and they are writing the code and doing designing, first of all , they are representing all of society. so they see different problems and opportunities, quite frankly, in society. and then they say, when we create a voice for an ai system, it shouldn't just sound like a young male's voice. it should be able to recognize an african-american voice. it should be able to recognize a hispanic voice, an asian voice. they see society differently , because of where they grew up, and the experiences they have of people in their own networks. so, they will help us design those products to make sure they

are ones that represent all of us and that are not biased. that work for everybody, not just a segment of the population. ♪ melinda: what i am seeing with the #metoo movement is we are still at the point of reckoning. there is still more to come out. ♪

emily: you founded pivotal ventures in 2015. when you started pivotal ventures, what is the mission that you set out to achieve? melinda: it was really to figure out what are the issues that american women face where there are still barriers, and how could we go about knocking some of those down?

so i am not finished saying yet the places that we are going to make investments. there are places where i feel there are some societal needs, where government might not fix it, or, heaven sector might not fix it on their own? emily: so pivotal ventures invests in venture capital firms. and is essentially a limited partner or fund to fund, where you know these are the funds that invest in the people who are investing in the people who are creating the future, right. ? so, when did you believe that first limited partners, or the investors that fund venture capital firms, have a role to play here? melinda: we don't have enough women founder ceo's who are getting funding. basically, less than 2% of vc funds go to women. less than 1% go to women of color. so in this innovation space, i said to myself, what is the best way to use capital to move things for women? and that is when i started to say, ok, i actually need to move some money into the venture capital space.

i want to do it smartly. the first goal is to make money. i'm not putting my money out as a social impact. i'm putting it out to make money. but i wanted to go behind funds, like aspect ventures that is run gao, and womenresa who are looking at opportunities and they have a thesis around, my gosh, there are so many opportunities there. if we go towards funding some of these women's businesses. emily: you mentioned that you care about returns. you are not doing this to have an impact. or it is not a handout , certainly. some lp's have said to me, all we care about is returns. some of the best investors may not be the best people, but they have the best returns. what do you have to say to those people? melinda: i have to say you are investing in what you know. you need to look at what trends are coming in the nation and how you're going to address them. women are 85% of consumer dollar spent. women control 70% of financial decisions in the house. if you are not investing in products that go towards females or women-led companies, you are missing an opportunity. because you just don't see it.

and i would say the same thing about underrepresented minorities. because after about 2044, this country, what we think of minorities today, when you add up all those groups, they will be the majority. so, you are leaving money on the table. you are not in the deal flow. so good luck 10 years from now. emily: how much of an impact can lp's have and should lp's have in galvanizing change? melinda: i think we definitely need lp's to start to make those investments. and i think they not only need to make investments, they need to open their networks. because, if you look at a woman, she often doesn't have the same network into the deal flow, right, or into the levels of the funders. same thing for underrepresented people of color. they don't have a seat at the table. or when they go in, people don't understand their products. so, it is being willing to take a risk a few times. emily: i interviewed ed williams, the cofounder of twitter for my book, and i asked, do you think online harassment and trolling would be such a problem today, if women had been present at the beginning of this company? he said, you know what, i don't

think it would be such a problem. we weren't thinking about how our products could be used to send rape threats or death threats. we were thinking about amazing things that could be done with twitter. how different do you think the world or the internet might be , if women had been present when some of these early platforms were created? melinda: i think if there was a woman there at the table, and it would take several, right, who had a real voice and real power, they would say, have we thought about this? have we thought about the rape scenario? because, if you look at the number of women who have faced violence, even in the united states, or some form of sexual harassment, it is huge. so it is very hard for me to imagine, if there was a woman of the table who really had power, that she would not bring those issues up. emily: do you worry that the #metoo movement could backfire? melinda: sure. i think there are places where it is already backfiring. we have to be careful. when you separate -- if men's and women's groups decide to separate in terms of when they have meetings or men will not take a meeting alone with a woman, because they are afraid of being accused of something, yeah, that is not good.

and so we have to have the real dialogue about what could create change. and what i am seeing with the #metoo movement is we are still at a point of reckoning. there is more to come out. because what you are seeing is , it is industry by industry by industry. that reckoning has to happen. and then i think we will start to get the, ok, what do we do about it? we are still in that reckoning, recognizing phase. and then we will come to what are the responsibilities on solutions? emily: so you think there will be more stories? melinda: oh, yes. i think, undoubtedly. you are seeing it. it is still playing out industry by industry. we have not rolled through all of the industries yet. when i see something like "time's up," i am optimistic whether you are a farm worker or restaurant worker, working in the hotel industry, any of them, . you actually have a place to go where you can get help, not just bemoan the fact that this has happened to you or a close friend, but you can actually go for legal help to have recourse. that will make a difference. emily: how do you root out bad behavior in a way that is not draconian? melinda: i do not think there is one solution that fits all.

i think we are putting a lot on a sole woman in a tech team or in a tech culture to make change. it is too much. it needs to be part of management and has to be part of the board level conversation. and then it has to be measured all throughout the company. how are we actually doing on these factors? and i think that is the only way you are going to get change. emily: do you think silicon valley can fix this? the problem of not having enough women at the table? melinda: i know silicon valley can fix this. they just have to decide they want to. they, they are one of the most innovative, amazing places. look at the technology that has come out of there that did not exist before. so they put their brains to this problem, and they get serious about it, and they put their money behind it, yeah, they can absolutely change it. ♪ melinda: the president, no matter who he or she is, has a responsibility to be a moral authority in the country and to be a role model. emily: your name and bill's name have been floated as vice presidential candidates. do either of you have political aspirations? ♪

emily: as you have said, you have been focused on gender for many years. what about our children? video games are still incredibly violent. you know, social media has all of these problems? if we don't change this now, what are the dangers? melinda: the dangers are that you will amplify the things that go on naturally that used to go on just in the playground. or the kid would bump or bully the person in the hall. i think you will end up seeing some of these societal problems because even though the technology was totally created for good, the kids are finding ways to use it and exploit it that adults never ever see. emily: i understand you have

decided not to allow your kids to have phones until high school. is that true-ish? melinda: well i think you -- as a family, you have to decide. what are our values around this? what is great about it? where are some of the places there could be pitfalls? then, you have to credit rules for your family for where you that then, you have to set up rules for your family for where you are right now. we have both a daughter who is a senior in college, a son who is a senior in high school, and a daughter who is a freshman in high school. the difference between where the tech is for my freshman in high school, versus my senior in college when she was a freshman , is night and day difference. instagram did not exist. snapchat do not exist. so the rules i have around that are new, because i did not have to create them up here. you have to decide what you value and say to your kids, i get that our family rules might look differently than that family or that family. but this is what we value. and so this is why you will not come to the dinner table with your phone on the table or in your pocket. we value your sleep. we value your mental health. emily: you mentioned that you

put your phone outside the door at 9:30 p.m. your phone is off. melinda: we all benefit from being off of our devices, and we have to role model that for our children. if we don't role model it, we can't ask them to do something differently. you know, think about looking at yourself first, anytime you point your finger, you have to look at the three fingers pointed at yourself and say, what are the rules i have to put in for myself first and then have that tricky conversation with my kid? the conversations are not easy, but you got to take them on , because they are too important. emily: how do we make space at work for parents and families? melinda: i think we pass it really good paid family leave policies, both at the state and the federal level. i think there is sort of this misnomer that we think, people get paid family leave today. the truth is in the private sector, only 15% of people get paid family leave. so we have to have good policies in the private sector. we have to have good state-level policies. there are five states today and washington, dc that have a paid family leave policy.

and then, we need one at the federal level. emily: in the annual letter that you and bill wrote, you said you wish president trump would treat women especially with more respect when he speaks and when he tweets. what does the president's treatment of women say about how we as a society treat women? and, do you think his example could set us back? melinda: i think that the president, no matter who he or she is, has a responsibility to be a moral authority in the country, and to be a role model. so i think some of the views today coming out on twitter from this president, don't represent our views of women in society. i am in the school system a lot, all over the country. and what principals and staff and teachers are teaching the kids is what is important in this country, about not bullying, about treating people equally, having respect. so you got a role model at the top, and he has made their job a lot harder. emily: your name, bill's name

have been floated as vice presidential candidates. do either of you have political aspirations? melinda: zero. [laughter] none. we like where we are, we like the jobs we are doing. we absolutely want to work with whatever administration comes in to that office. we need to. the u.s. government is too important around the world. and our role in the world is too important not to work with them. so we feel like, we can work hand-in-hand with them in partnership through the foundation. emily: you both said you are going to continue working with the administration because you think working together is important, even though in some places, you may disagree. aside from his treatment of women, what are your biggest concerns about this administration? melinda: this administration is making major budget cuts, proposing major budget cuts in foreign aid. the message that sends to the rest of the world about, do we care about others, and our ability to create markets to help countries move, to fill their aspirations from moving

from low to middle income countries and create markets for themselves, we are pulling back on that. that is a big concern of my husband's and i. emily: in the last year, diversity has become part of the national conversation, finally. how do you feel about the conversation we are having? do you think it will lead to lasting change? melinda: it's about time. so i am relieved to see we are having the conversation. and i think it is going to be up to us as a nation to decide where we take that. but i think the fact that you have that conversation coming up at the same time that you have this reckoning with the me too #metoo conversation, people are getting their voice. when you look at the fact that over 80 of the candidates running for governor are females this time -- we have only had 39 female governors in the history of our country. when you look at over 400 of the candidates for u.s. house of representatives are women, when you see that over 50 candidates for the senate are women, women are coming out in droves. and guess what? they don't all look the same, which i think is fantastic. emily: i like to think success

is when a woman engineer or a woman ceo is normal. or a woman running for president , or being president is normal. will that happen in our lifetime? melinda: yes. absolutely it will. and i completely agree with you. when you have women at the top, and the reason it is so important, is they role model. other little girls can look up and go, i can be like her who is president. i can be like that movie producer. i can be like that director. i can be like that person who is creating amazing content. so thoe important. but you are starting -- you are really seeing it happen. the sparks are all there. and we need to help keep it going. emily: and a woman president , too? do you think that will happen? melinda: in my lifetime, definitely, i think that will happen. emily: melinda gates, thank you for joining us on bloomberg "studio 1.0." it has been great to have you. ♪ ♪ 2, down. back up.

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