By Stacy M. Brown
NNPA Newswire Senior Nationwide Correspondent
@StacyBrownMedia
Melinda French Gates has been on the forefront of philanthropic innovation since founding Pivotal Ventures in 2015. Pivotal Ventures is devoted to advancing social progress by a strategic mix of enterprise capital investments, advocacy funding, and philanthropic grantmaking. In 2022, French Gates expanded her mission by launching the Pivotal Philanthropies Basis, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit group, to additional help philanthropic initiatives with a versatile strategy to driving influence.
“In relation to fixing huge, sophisticated issues, it helps to have a variety of instruments in your toolbox,” French Gates acknowledged in a earlier interview. This philosophy underpins Pivotal Ventures’ efforts to bridge philanthropy, enterprise capital, and coverage advocacy. The group’s major focus areas embody:
- Growing the variety of girls graduating, investing, and main in know-how: Pivotal Ventures is dedicated to enhancing girls’s roles and management within the tech trade, selling innovation and variety.
- Accelerating funding in girls and ladies of coloration: By specializing in the skills and contributions of ladies and ladies of coloration, Pivotal Ventures goals to amplify their transformative influence by focused investments.
- Growing the variety of girls operating for and holding public workplace: On condition that greater than half of the U.S. grownup inhabitants is feminine, Pivotal Ventures advocates for better feminine illustration in lawmaking establishments to make sure their views are included in policymaking.
- Backing the creation of a contemporary caregiving system: The group helps initiatives to develop a caregiving system that permits households to successfully steadiness work and care tasks.
- Securing a complete federal paid household and medical go away coverage: Pivotal Ventures pushes for insurance policies that profit all working households, no matter location or job kind.
- Increasing entry to psychological well being help for younger individuals: Pivotal Ventures focuses on offering psychological well being assets for youth, notably LGBTQ+ youth and younger individuals of coloration, who’re underserved by present methods designed for adults.
Along with her philanthropic endeavors, French Gates is an outspoken advocate within the political area. She has brazenly opposed Donald Trump’s insurance policies and declared her help for President Joe Biden’s reelection bid. “On this election, I can’t vote for a person who rolls again girls’s reproductive rights and says the heinous issues that he says about girls. So, I completely am not voting for Trump, and I’ll vote for Biden,” she instructed Gayle King on “CBS Mornings.”
French Gates emphasised the crucial position of ladies voters, notably in battleground states, in shaping the upcoming election. “It’s going to come down on this election—it is going to come all the way down to the ladies turning out within the battleground states,” she insisted. “They … girls turned out within the midterm elections and stated, ‘That is sufficient,’ and we’ve received to do it once more.” A staunch reproductive rights advocate, French Gates celebrated the current Supreme Court docket choice upholding entry to the abortion treatment mifepristone however acknowledged the continuing battle for reproductive freedoms. “Immediately’s Supreme Court docket choice is welcome information, however the combat for reproductive rights is much from over,” she wrote on the social media platform X.
French Gates’ dedication to philanthropy started along with her co-founding the Gates Basis, the place she guided the world’s largest charity for over 20 years. Her previous and current initiatives mirror her dedication to making a more healthy, extra affluent, and extra equitable future. Because the creator of the bestselling ebook “The Second of Elevate” and creator of Second of Elevate Books, she continues to share her imaginative and prescient for a extra equal world. “For over 25 years, I’ve labored to unlock a more healthy, extra affluent, extra equal future,” French Gates acknowledged. “Immediately, with Pivotal, I’m as dedicated as ever to accelerating progress and advancing girls’s energy and affect across the globe.”
