♪ 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." she met the man who 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. she is investing her money and her might to empower women everywhere, especially in technology. joining me today on our show, melinda gates, founder 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. 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. we think that is important. they explained why because of the opportunities. 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. so they said to me, you can choose any college in the nation you can get into and we will figure out a way to pay for it. emily: your father was an aerospace engineer. you also studied computers.

how did you discover computers as a young girl? melinda: i was fortunate. i went to an all-girls catholic high school. one of the teachers, the math teacher who i really admired a lot and worked with a lot, she went to a conference. she saw these apple two's that had come up. she was so excited about them, she came to the principal, who was a nun, and said, we have to get these for the girls. 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. that's how i got hooked. emily: emily: you went on to duke. you got a bachelors in computer science and you got an mba at duke as well. this is when women were better represented in computer science. what was your experience like? melinda: it was exciting. i did notice after i got past the freshman class, there were just fewer and fewer women. that was just how it was. i learned to program with the guys. emily: you went on to microsoft 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 this job. 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 a few months after i was at the company. it was tough. i was used to working in very all-male environment in college. it was abrasive and combative. i thought maybe, i will just quit and go somewhere else. i can get a great job anywhere else. i thought maybe there is something about me that doesn't fit. it took me a while to realize, no, it's this culture. i don't want to be like that. i tried on being myself. it ended up being successful. emily: you met bill at microsoft. you got married in 1994 and you left microsoft in 1996. you have become one of the world's most active and generous philanthropists. a core part of that work is a part of empowering women and girls. were their people who helped shape your thinking on women's issues in particular? melinda: i have been lucky

enough to travel for over 17 years in philanthropy. i travel all over the world. i'm in the developing world. i'm in asia. i'm in africa. who shaped my views were the women that i talked to on the ground. what i was hearing 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, of women on boards, or women ceos. when i initially went into philanthropy, i thought, i am going to stay away from this women's issue. maybe those are the soft issues. what i had since learned is that those are actually the fundamental and hard issues. if we don't solve those, we will not get major change for the world. my aspirations and bill's aspirations, whether it is health, decision-making, 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. similar numbers when it comes to jobs women are holding in this industry. you lived this. what went wrong? melinda: it looks like when the gaming industry turned, when the program -- when the games became more male games, more shoot 'em up. if you think about the early games i played, pac-man, the adventure games, breakout, they were gender-neutral. when you got into these very combative games that were male centered, and more and more men got into the industry, women just started to feel unwelcome. when you get that flywheel going where it an industry becomes single-sex focused, it feels unwelcoming to women. they might join it but if they don't see other people around them, we know people look for role models. if they don't find it, they say, i want to get out. we think that is probably what went wrong in the computer

industry. emily: how did you encounter bias throughout your career? melinda: 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 opened to me if i did well, if i performed well as a female. in industry, i ran into it all the time. i would present, and i would show up at a user group that is 95% male, and they would like, this woman is going to present to us? what could she possibly know about this product? as soon as i opened my mouth, it was clear i knew the product in depth. i was not just there to sell it. i was managing the developers who are writing the code. i knew what was in that code. i would see it on people's faces. i would bump up against it. i would learn to push through it. emily: james damore was recently fired at google for writing a memo in which he claimed that men are more biological 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 a 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? 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 will bake more bias into the system. where as if we design a system where there are different pathways in, we look at the environment, how to design it, you look at how do you spawn innovation for women and women of color, you will start to 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 had to speak up for women in tech and that person could be you? melinda: i think, a few years ago -- i have been disappointed for quite some time about the numbers going down in terms of

computer science degrees for women. i kept thinking there would be a woman to speak out or women who would speak out more. there are women speaking out. but i had not honestly put together my background to realizing, i was in that space. i have always cared about computer and tech. wow, maybe i should use my voice behind us. there are places in the united states where we are bumping up against barriers and we are not getting far enough. we have to make sure low income countries, and high income countries all become equal for women. i realize this is a place where i had something 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 will be such a reality the next decade and beyond. if we bake the bias is in now, trying to undo it will be too hard. i thought, what i thought were going on at ai, there are no women at the table. i can name two. 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: if they are writing the code and doing designing, first of all they are representing all of society. they see different problems and opportunities, quite frankly in the 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. they see society differently because of where they grew up in the experiences of people in their own networks. they will help us design those products to make sure they are once i represent all of us and then are not biased.

that work for everybody. not just a segment of the population. what i'm seeing with the "me too movement" is we are at a 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 you set out to achieve? melinda: it was to figure out what are the issues that american women face where there are still barriers, and how could we go about knocking them down? i am not finished saying yet the places we are going to make investments.

but there are places i feel there are some societal needs, where government might not fix it or private sector might not fix it on their own. emily: pivotal ventures invests in venture capital firms. it is essentially a limited partner or fund to fund, where these are the funds that invest in the people who are investing in the people who are creating the future. when did you first believe that limited partners, or the investors that fund venture capital firms, have a role to play? melinda: we don't have enough women founder ceos who are getting funding. basically, less than 2% of funds go to women. less than 1% go to women of color. in this innovation space, i said to myself, what is the best way to use capital to move things for women? that is when i started to say, i need to move money into 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. i wanted to go behind funds, like aspect ventures, who are looking at opportunities and they have a thesis around, my gosh, there are so many opportunities out there if we go towards funding some of these women's businesses. emily: you mentioned you care about returns. you are not doing this to have an impact. it's not a handout. 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. you just don't see it. i would say the same thing about unrepresented minorities.

after about 2044, this country, when you talk about minorities, they will be the majority. you are leaving money on the table. you are not in the deal flow. 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 need lp's to start to make those investments. i think they not only need to make investments, they need to open their networks. if you look at a woman, she often doesn't have the same network into the deal flow. same thing for underrepresented people of color. they don't have a seat at the table. when they go in, people don't understand their products. it is being willing to take a risk a few times. emily: i interviewed the cofounder of twitter for my book and i asked, do you think online harassment would be a problem today if women have been present

at the beginning of this company? he said, i don't think it would be such a problem. we were not thinking about how our product 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, who had a really voice and power, they would say, have we thought about this? have we thought about the rape scenario? if you look at the number of women who have faced violence, even in the united states, it is huge. it is very hard for me to imagine if there was a woman at the table who had power, that she would not bring those issues up. emily: do you worry the "me too" movement could backfire? melinda: sure. there are places where it is already backfiring. we have to be careful. if men's and women's groups decide to separate in terms of when they have meetings or men will not take a meeting along with a woman because they are

afraid of being accused of something, yeah, that is not good. we have to have the real dialogue about what could create change. when i am seeing with the "me too" movement is we are still at a point of reckoning. there is more to come out. what you are seeing is it is industry by industry. that reckoning has to happen. and then i think we will start to get back, what do we do about it? we are still in that reckoning, recognizing face. then we will come to what are the responsibilities on solutions? emily: so you think there will be more stories? melinda: undoubtedly. you are seeing it. it is still playing out industry by industry. when i see something like "time's up," i am optimistic whether you are a farm worker or restaurant worker, any of them. you have a place to go where you can get help, not just bemoan the fact that this has happened to you. but you can go for legal help to have recourse. that will make a difference. emily: how do you root out to bad behavior in a way that is not too draconian? melinda: i think we are putting a lot on the sole woman and a

tech team or a tech culture to make change. it is too much. it needs to be part of management. it has to be part of the board level conversation. it has to be measured throughout the company. how are we actually doing on these factors? i think that is the only way you look at 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 are one of the most innovative, amazing places. look at the technology that has come out of there that did not exist before. they put their brains to this problem and they get serious and put their money behind it, they can change it. the president, no matter who he or she is, has a role to be a moral authority in the country and 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?

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emily: as you have said, you have been focused on gender for many years. what about our children? video games are still incredibly violent. social media has all of these problems. if we do not change this now, what are the dangers? melinda: the dangers are you will amplify the things that go on naturally that used to go on just in the playground. i think you will end up seeing some of these societal problems because even though technology was totally created for good, the kids are finding ways to use it and exploit it that adults never see. emily: you have decided not to allow your kids to have phones until high school.

is that true-ish? melinda: as a family, you have to decide. what are our values around this? what is great about it? but where are the places there could be pitfalls? 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 was a senior in high school, and a daughter who is a freshman high school. the difference between where the tech is for my freshman ian high school versus my senior in college when she was a freshman, is night and day. instagram did not exist. snapchat do not exist. the roles 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. 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 mention 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. looking at yourself, anytime you point your finger, you have to 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 have 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 have really good paid family leave policies, both at the state and federal level. i think there is 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. we have to have good policies in the private sector, we have to have good state-level policies,

there are five states that have a paid family leave policy. 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? do you think his example could set us back? melinda: i think 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. 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. 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. you have 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. none. we like where we are and we like the jobs we are doing. we absolutely want to work with whatever administration comes in to that office. the u.s. government is too important around the world. and our role in the world is too important to not work with npr. we feel like we can work hand-in-hand with them and in partnership through the foundation. emily: you say you will continue to work 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 for moving from low to middle income countries, we are pulling back on that. that is a big concern of my husband's and i. emily: diversity has become part of the national conversation in the last year. how do you feel about the conversation we are having? do you think it will lead to lasting change? melinda: it's about time. i am relieved to see we are having the conversation. i think it is going to be up to us as a nation to decide where we take that. i think the fact you have that conversation coming up at the same time that you have this reckoning with the "me too" 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. guess what? they do not all look the same,

which i think is fantastic. emily: i like to think successes when a woman engineer or 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. i completely agree with you. when you have women at the top, and the reason it is important, is a role model. other girls can look up and go, i can be like her. i can be like that movie producer. i can be like that director. i can be like that person who is creating amazing content. those role models are important. you are really seeing it happen. the sparks are all there. 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. it has been great to have you. ♪

♪ manus: you are watching the "best of daybreak: middle east." the major stories driving headlines from the region this week. yousef: crude confusion. president trump makes claims about saudi arabia's oil outlook that the white house has to roll back. he then labels opec price manipulator. manus: he outlined his vision for the business and the first television interview since taking the top job. yousef: drama. dubai's worst-performing stock of 2018 falls even furthe