The Washington Post Co. elected Melinda French Gates -- a former Microsoft Corp. executive and wife of founder Bill Gates -- to its board yesterday, adding the spouse of the world's richest person to a 10-member board that already includes the world's second-richest person, Warren E. Buffett.
Melinda Gates worked at Microsoft from 1987 to 1996 and developed multimedia products. In 2000, she and her husband launched the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which has given away billions of dollars in educational and health-related aid to Third World countries for work on such initiatives as new vaccines and HIV-prevention programs.
The foundation is worth $27 billion, three times the size of the Ford Foundation. Forbes magazine named Bill Gates the world's wealthiest person, estimating he alone is worth $47 billion; the couple have vowed to give away 95 percent of their wealth in their lifetimes.
During a 2003 humanitarian trip to Africa, Melinda Gates described why the couple are willing to part with so much of their wealth: "Yes, Bill worked really hard and he's been incredibly smart about some things, but also very, very lucky. Given that, we both feel a huge responsibility to do what we can with that resource."
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