Speaker 1: Let's be honest. Life is stressful, its work, its relationships
Speaker 1: and the state of the world. But there's a way
Speaker 1: to bring that stress level down. Calm. It's the number
Speaker 1: one app for mental wellness, with tons of content to
Speaker 1: manage anxiety, promote concentration, and help you unwind. There's music, meditation,
Speaker 1: a more Calm makes it easy to de stress. You
Speaker 1: can literally do a one minute breathing exercise. Personally, I
Speaker 1: love the soundscapes. Nothing like a little rain on leaves
Speaker 1: to help soothe my nervous system. I've actually been working
Speaker 1: with Calm for a couple of years now, and I'd
Speaker 1: love for you to check out my series on reducing
Speaker 1: overwhelm eight short practices Quick Relief. Right now, listeners of
Speaker 1: On Purpose get forty percent off a subscription to Calm
Speaker 1: Premium at Calm dot com. Forward slash j that's c
Speaker 1: LM dot com Forward slash jay for forty percent off.
Speaker 1: Calm your Mind, Change your Life.
Speaker 2: I had somehow gotten to that point in life, you know,
Speaker 2: in my forties, where I had thought, oh, there are
Speaker 2: these amazing joy moments or these really sad low moments. No,
Speaker 2: you can hold joy in sadness side by side.
Speaker 1: One of the most influential voices in the philanthropy community,
Speaker 1: Melenda French Gates.
Speaker 2: I thought I'd be married fifty plus years. For me,
Speaker 2: I couldn't go forward. There wasn't enough trust any longer.
Speaker 2: I had days where I thought I don't know if
Speaker 2: I'll ever be happy again. That was the hardest thing
Speaker 2: I had ever been through in my life.
Speaker 1: Hey everyone, I've got some huge news to share with you.
Speaker 1: In the last ninety days, seventy nine point four percent
Speaker 1: of our audience came from viewers and listeners that are
Speaker 1: not subscribed to this channel. There's research that shows that
Speaker 1: if you want to create a habit, make it easy
Speaker 1: to access. By hitting the subscribe button, you're creating a
Speaker 1: habit of learning how to be happier, healthier, and more healed.
Speaker 1: This would also mean the absolute world to me and
Speaker 1: help help us make better, bigger, brighter content for you
Speaker 1: and the world. Subscribe right now. The number one health
Speaker 1: and wellness podcast.
Speaker 2: Jay set Jay Sheety zet.
Speaker 1: Hey everyone, welcome back to On Purpose, the number one
Speaker 1: mental health podcast in the world. Thanks to each and
Speaker 1: every one of you that come back every week to
Speaker 1: become happier, healthier, and more healed. You know that my
Speaker 1: greatest fascination is sitting down with individuals who've trodden parts
Speaker 1: that may seem really different from ours, but we can
Speaker 1: still relate to them. We can still connect to them,
Speaker 1: We can still see ourselves in their experiences and find advice,
Speaker 1: lessons and insights that we can apply to our own.
Speaker 1: Today's conversation is going to do just that. I have
Speaker 1: the honor today of speaking to Melinda Frenchgates, a philanthropist, businesswoman,
Speaker 1: and global advocate for women and girls. As the co
Speaker 1: chair of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Melinda sets
Speaker 1: the direction and priorities of one of the world's largest
Speaker 1: philanthropies across the world. In twenty fifteen, Melinda founded Pivotal Ventures,
Speaker 1: a company working to accelerate the pace of social progress
Speaker 1: in the United States. Melinda is also the author of
Speaker 1: the best selling book The Moment of Lift, Go and
Speaker 1: Grab It. If you haven't already, please welcome to On Purpose.
Speaker 1: Melinda French Kates. Melinda, it's such a joy to be
Speaker 1: with you. Thank you so much for being here.
Speaker 2: I'm so glad we could do this.
Speaker 1: I know me too, me too, And I want to
Speaker 1: dive straight in and I have so many questions I
Speaker 1: wanted to ask you, but I wanted to start off
Speaker 1: by saying, you've gone through a lot of changes recently.
Speaker 1: So you just turned sixty, congratulations. You're a grandma now,
Speaker 1: I believe, so congratulations. And I believe your last job
Speaker 1: just left home, and so now you're an empty nest
Speaker 1: to two, which not as much congratulations. You've been through
Speaker 1: so many changes in your life, and I wanted to
Speaker 1: start by asking you, what are your greatest takeaways on
Speaker 1: dealing with change? The thing that seems to be the
Speaker 1: greatest constant in all of our lives, but something none
Speaker 1: of us seemed to be prepared for or comfortable with.
Speaker 1: How have you learned to deal with change?
Speaker 2: You know, I think I learned to deal change pretty
Speaker 2: early in my life because I went away for college.
Speaker 2: A lot of people in my school stayed in Texas.
Speaker 2: I grew up in Dallas, and I embraced change like
Speaker 2: I was excited to go away for college, excited to
Speaker 2: meet new people, and same thing. After I left college,
Speaker 2: I then switched. I went to college in North Carolina
Speaker 2: at Duke, and then I switched and went to Seattle
Speaker 2: to a brand new company hardly heard of back then
Speaker 2: Microsoft and again I just jumped in with both feet
Speaker 2: and I found it fun and I was curious to
Speaker 2: meet people. So to me, change isn't something to be
Speaker 2: afraid of. It's more something to embrace and say, oh, okay,
Speaker 2: here I am. I didn't expect to be in this
Speaker 2: place in life, but I am now, so okay. How
Speaker 2: am I going to make the best of it? And
Speaker 2: I try to stay open and curious because so often
Speaker 2: people will come into your life if you have changed
Speaker 2: in a new way or a new place that I
Speaker 2: try to stay open and curious, like, oh, what might
Speaker 2: this person be here to teach me? Or what can
Speaker 2: I learn from them? Or can I connect to them
Speaker 2: in a different way? So I don't know. For me,
Speaker 2: change is in a certain way kind of fun and
Speaker 2: I embrace it.
Speaker 1: Where did that mindset come from? Because I feel so
Speaker 1: many people have the opposite experience, where change is scary,
Speaker 1: changes daunting, change is worrying. I identify with how you
Speaker 1: feel about change. I chose to do pretty drastic things
Speaker 1: early on in my life which made me very positive
Speaker 1: towards change because I had to go against the grain.
Speaker 1: I had to disagree with people that were close to me.
Speaker 1: I had to not worry about what people thought about
Speaker 1: my choices, and so I feel the same way as
Speaker 1: you do that I've seen change as a positive thing
Speaker 1: in my life, but when I speak to people, changes
Speaker 1: one of the most scariest worrying things. Where did your
Speaker 1: positive mindset towards change come from? Was it a family member?
Speaker 1: Was there something that happened early on in your life
Speaker 1: where you had a change and you adapted? Well, where
Speaker 1: did that come from?
Speaker 2: I think it probably was my parents. I mean, my
Speaker 2: parents had both grown up in New Orleans, but then
Speaker 2: had gone away when my dad went to graduate school,
Speaker 2: they got married and moved across the country to California.
Speaker 2: Then they moved back to Dallas. My dad worked on
Speaker 2: the early Apollo space missions. Talk about change. Nobody had
Speaker 2: ever gone into space or gone to the moon, and
Speaker 2: I saw how excited he was, and he was excited
Speaker 2: about being part of it. And then my parents gave
Speaker 2: my siblings and me. I'm one of four very middle
Speaker 2: class family growing up, but they constantly gave us the message,
Speaker 2: you will be college going. There wasn't a choice. You
Speaker 2: will go to college, and it's a matter of where
Speaker 2: you go. You can go anywhere you want to go
Speaker 2: in the country. We'll take on the debt, but we
Speaker 2: highly encourage you to go out of state. We just
Speaker 2: think you will learn more about yourself in the world
Speaker 2: if you go out of state. And so I think
Speaker 2: because they had that mindset, I did choose a college
Speaker 2: out of state. I went to Duke of North Carolina,
Speaker 2: and to me, it just became kind of exciting and fun.
Speaker 2: And I think if that at that formative time in life,
Speaker 2: if you're willing to go somewhere different and try something out,
Speaker 2: then maybe you're more likely to do it later. And
Speaker 2: then I never expected ever to have the role that
Speaker 2: I'm in in philanthropy. But once we started the Gates Foundation,
Speaker 2: I had the opportunity to travel the world. And not
Speaker 2: that I wasn't already traveling, but I never would have
Speaker 2: gone to India, I don't think as many times as
Speaker 2: I did. Are so many different places in Africa, and
Speaker 2: I started to realize that the more you travel, it's
Speaker 2: like a book. The more books you read, the more
Speaker 2: you learn. The more you travel, the more you learn
Speaker 2: about people and particularly how similar we are. And so
Speaker 2: I think my parents ingrained that in me.
Speaker 1: That's beautiful. What were your dreams back then? Obviously your
Speaker 1: mission is so clear now and we'll get to that.
Speaker 1: But I wonder because when I see the work you've
Speaker 1: been doing, which is absolutely phenomenal, and the fact that
Speaker 1: service is your entire life is so inspiring to me,
Speaker 1: and you know, something I aspire for in my own life.
Speaker 1: But I wonder where did your dreams start? Going to
Speaker 1: Duke obviously an incredible institution in and of itself, parents
Speaker 1: who wanted you to study and perform. Well, we'll talk
Speaker 1: about going to Microsoft, But what were your dreams back
Speaker 1: then when you're going to Duke? Like, what was the
Speaker 1: sky's the limit? So to speak? What was the sky
Speaker 1: at the time.
Speaker 2: Well, I was lucky that in eighth grade my parents
Speaker 2: sent me to a course that my dad had been
Speaker 2: through through his work, had just recently sent him called
Speaker 2: the Successful Life Course, which I kind of think is
Speaker 2: a little bit of a funny name now when I
Speaker 2: look back on it. But they taught us a couple
Speaker 2: of things. One was to take quiet time in the morning,
Speaker 2: and the other was to set goals, like really have
Speaker 2: goals for your life and don't necessarily share those with
Speaker 2: the world. Share them with a couple of people you trust,
Speaker 2: and so I set a goal of going to college.
Speaker 2: I set up goal during high school of Hey, I
Speaker 2: realized I actually want to go to college in computer science.
Speaker 2: So I picked a university that was good at that
Speaker 2: at the time. And I knew I wanted to be
Speaker 2: a professional working woman eventually with children. And so I
Speaker 2: think that sort of goal mindset really helped set me
Speaker 2: on my path to then go on to Duke and
Speaker 2: then go on eventually to a career at Microsoft.
Speaker 1: Who ran this course, it was.
Speaker 2: A man and a woman. Ed foreman was the man,
Speaker 2: and they were down in a southern part of Texas
Speaker 2: and you would go off with a cohort of people
Speaker 2: you didn't know. My sister and I went together. Yeah,
Speaker 2: you just soaked it in. And they gave us a
Speaker 2: whole bunch of books to read. We had, you know,
Speaker 2: we read a Dale Carnegie's book on Influencing people, right,
Speaker 2: And I think at the same time, I mean, again,
Speaker 2: very formative time in my life. I'm in eighth grade.
Speaker 2: I'm switching to a new high school. But in high
Speaker 2: school I had these very liberal nuns. It was an
Speaker 2: ursuline academy. It was an all girls Catholic school. We
Speaker 2: got the messages from all of our female teachers we
Speaker 2: could be anything we wanted to be in the world.
Speaker 2: They were incredibly supportive. But the nuns also taught us
Speaker 2: two things. One was to take time in silence. There
Speaker 2: was a chapel in the middle of the school, which
Speaker 2: wasn't a fancy chapel. It was two classrooms, but they
Speaker 2: were put together. You could go and have this silent time.
Speaker 2: They would send us off on silent retreats. But they
Speaker 2: also sent us out to serve. The motto of the
Speaker 2: school was servey on, that is, to serve, and they
Speaker 2: taught us that you know, one person, just one person,
Speaker 2: can make the difference in the life of another person.
Speaker 2: And if you are lucky enough to come to a
Speaker 2: school like Ursuline and somebody's paying your private tuition, which
Speaker 2: was my parents, you should serve. And so I served
Speaker 2: in the local public school two miles down the road,
Speaker 2: and I saw the difference in that public school for
Speaker 2: those kids versus where I was, or the Dallas County
Speaker 2: courthouse or the local hospital. And so I think those
Speaker 2: values got embedded very early on.
Speaker 1: I love hearing that because there's sound so close to
Speaker 1: the kind of programming we offer today. And I always
Speaker 1: think about just how even in formal education, you may
Speaker 1: not be exposed to some of these ideas which seem
Speaker 1: like everyone should have access to them. And it's incredible
Speaker 1: that you know you had a course like that that
Speaker 1: you went to early on. I was going to ask
Speaker 1: you two questions about that. What have you found is
Speaker 1: the value of spending that time alone, both from the
Speaker 1: course and obviously from the nuns that you got in
Speaker 1: your school, Like, what have you found you still do that?
Speaker 1: What value? What has been the greatest value that you've
Speaker 1: gained from that over the last few decades.
Speaker 2: I spend time in silence almost every single day, and
Speaker 2: I just find for me, it's often in the morning,
Speaker 2: before I exercise or get on my phone or whatever,
Speaker 2: and I just find that that's the time that you,
Speaker 2: at least for me, that I can hear myself. I
Speaker 2: can hear in silence those moments of hmm I made
Speaker 2: a mistake yesterday.
Speaker 1: Hmm.
Speaker 2: I didn't quite show up the way I wanted to.
Speaker 2: I wasn't my whole integrated self, or oh wow, I
Speaker 2: would really like to show somebody today how grateful I
Speaker 2: am for them. I haven't. I haven't gotten to do
Speaker 2: that in the last week. And so that time and
Speaker 2: quiet for me is just it's a time to really
Speaker 2: connect to my soul and to I hope, integrate all
Speaker 2: the things that have come over time in my life
Speaker 2: or in the day before. I also made sure when
Speaker 2: our kids were growing up that we went around the
Speaker 2: dinner table and we all said what we were thankful
Speaker 2: for before we ate our meal. And the only rule
Speaker 2: was you couldn't criticize what somebody else was thankful for,
Speaker 2: and ideally you'd come up with your own. And even
Speaker 2: when we'd have tables of teenagers for dinner, everybody did it,
Speaker 2: and I was always just amazed what came out of
Speaker 2: their mouths, out of their mouths, and it was just
Speaker 2: that little moment of gratitude, right, And I think so
Speaker 2: often if we can stop and be silent and quiet
Speaker 2: and hear ourselves, then the gratitude comes. And boy, just
Speaker 2: gratitude help you get through a lot of things in life,
Speaker 2: even hard things.
Speaker 1: For sure, for sure. And the second thing you mentioned
Speaker 1: there was setting your goals, but you shared something really interesting.
Speaker 1: You talked about how only would the people you trust
Speaker 1: and I wanted to ask what was the perception or
Speaker 1: the reason for that, because that's really powerful, I think
Speaker 1: for people to hear. Mm.
Speaker 2: So this course that I went to, this successful life course,
Speaker 2: they said, you know, only share your goals with you know,
Speaker 2: a few trusted people, because you're going to have a
Speaker 2: lot of critics. You're gonna have a lot of people
Speaker 2: to say, no way you want to go to that university,
Speaker 2: You can't make that, or you want to be that
Speaker 2: in life? No, not a chance. But if you trusted
Speaker 2: people who have your back and have your interest in mind,
Speaker 2: they will help you meet your goal or find your dream,
Speaker 2: or advance you towards your dream. And I've found that
Speaker 2: to be very true all through life actually, and it
Speaker 2: becomes incredibly important to cultivate those relationships with those trusted
Speaker 2: people and vice versa, that you become there in their
Speaker 2: small circle of trust.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we make one of two mistakes. We either tell
Speaker 1: everyone everything or we tell one person everything. So we
Speaker 1: either want everyone to have all the answers to all
Speaker 1: of our questions. And you're so right that if we
Speaker 1: tell everyone our plans, everyone's going to have an opinion
Speaker 1: about your plan, and that opinion may actually discourage you
Speaker 1: and disempower you because we're so opened up and exposed
Speaker 1: to people's opinions about us. And the opposite is also
Speaker 1: true that if you only tell one person, that can
Speaker 1: be really hard as well, because that person may not
Speaker 1: have the tools or the resources or the experience to
Speaker 1: guide you. And so having this counsel of wise advisors
Speaker 1: or guides or mentors or well wishes and friends can
Speaker 1: be such a powerful thing. I think when people are
Speaker 1: setting goals, it's probably one of the biggest mistakes we
Speaker 1: make today where we announce it on social media to
Speaker 1: the whole world, or we tell everyone in our WhatsApp
Speaker 1: chat or group chat or whatever it may be, and
Speaker 1: it can be really, really tough. You're fortunate that you
Speaker 1: gain some of these exposures early on, and they've helped
Speaker 1: you in your mindset. What's the lesson that you wish
Speaker 1: you would have learned earlier? What's the lesson that you
Speaker 1: learned later on in life that you wish you'd learned earlier.
Speaker 2: I've learned so many things later in life. And you know,
Speaker 2: I think you also have three children. They're now in
Speaker 2: their twenties, they're not children anymore, but you learn a
Speaker 2: lot when you're parenting your children. Like you may think, oh,
Speaker 2: I'm a patient person. You have no idea what patients
Speaker 2: is until you have children, and until you really are
Speaker 2: trying to pass your values on. You have to really
Speaker 2: kind of sit with, Okay, what are my values? I
Speaker 2: thought I knew them? But am I living them so
Speaker 2: that I can pass them on? I would say one
Speaker 2: lesson I learned later in life was that the world
Speaker 2: really isn't built for everybody.
Speaker 1: Know.
Speaker 2: I kind of assumed when I left I was in
Speaker 2: such a supportive environment in high school with this all
Speaker 2: girls school that when I went out to university, you know,
Speaker 2: I just met so many different people of different walks
Speaker 2: of life, which was fantastic and widening and it helped
Speaker 2: me grow. But then when you go out in your
Speaker 2: professional career, I just saw began to see so many
Speaker 2: blocks for women and people of color, where I just
Speaker 2: assumed when we left university we would have the same
Speaker 2: opportunities as men or even as I traveled for the Foundation,
Speaker 2: I just assumed if we were getting a new technology
Speaker 2: out in a community, it went to the men and
Speaker 2: women equally. That was just a completely false assumption, and
Speaker 2: I think I didn't realize how the world had been,
Speaker 2: maybe inadvertently but set up for men. And you know,
Speaker 2: I had to go back and learn some history to
Speaker 2: understand how to we get where we are, to say, okay, well,
Speaker 2: how could we start to maybe accelerate some of that change.
Speaker 1: What was the first experience you had in your life,
Speaker 1: Like you said, you had none saying to you you
Speaker 1: can you know, you can be anything you want and
Speaker 1: opportunities are available. You had that training. When was the
Speaker 1: first time you had personal experience of oh, I don't
Speaker 1: actually have the same types of opportunities as men.
Speaker 2: Well, when I went into computer science at DO, there
Speaker 2: were some women freshman year, but by sophomore year there
Speaker 2: was me and maybe a couple of others. And I
Speaker 2: realized that a lot of the young men freshman year
Speaker 2: were better trained than I was in computer science, so
Speaker 2: they were already coming in a step up, which is
Speaker 2: why we lost so many women. I was trained well enough,
Speaker 2: thank God, that I could persist and keep my self
Speaker 2: esteem up to move through and to continue on. But
Speaker 2: I just started to realize part of the reason we
Speaker 2: don't have more women in computer science, and look how
Speaker 2: important technology has become in our society, we still don't
Speaker 2: have nearly enough women in the tech sector creating products.
Speaker 2: It's because we haven't offered the right There are many reasons,
Speaker 2: but we haven't for instance, offered the right classes to
Speaker 2: young women so that when they go to college their
Speaker 2: confidence is up they've programmed as much as young men,
Speaker 2: or that opening freshman class is a creative class, not
Speaker 2: just a coding tech class. So we just we have
Speaker 2: whole industries, for instance in the United States that just
Speaker 2: are not as welcoming to women. Politics in our own
Speaker 2: country is not at all welcoming to women. I mean,
Speaker 2: women get harassed on the campaign trails so much more
Speaker 2: than men. And they will tell you if they want
Speaker 2: to run their campaign, say they want to become a
Speaker 2: state senator, they have to have had a certain amount
Speaker 2: of money to do that, which is why men usually
Speaker 2: will have more money by a certain point in their
Speaker 2: life saved up to be able to run, or a
Speaker 2: buddy will come in and will fund their buddy to
Speaker 2: be in politics. So there are just many places where
Speaker 2: there are roadblocks and barriers for women and people of
Speaker 2: color that don't necessarily exist for a white man. And
Speaker 2: I think we need to look at those and take
Speaker 2: some of them down so everybody can rise up into
Speaker 2: positions of power, use their full creativity.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you said you had to go back and study
Speaker 1: history a little bit to look at how that had transpired.
Speaker 1: What were some of the key moments or key points
Speaker 1: of history that you think were worthy of studying for
Speaker 1: people to look back at and educate themselves on that
Speaker 1: you think would be valuable.
Speaker 2: Well, for sure, the US Constitution. I mean there were
Speaker 2: no women in the room writing the constitution. There are
Speaker 2: no black people in the room writing the constitution. If
Speaker 2: you try to imagine what we might have devised with
Speaker 2: other people at the table, you know, and not counted
Speaker 2: women as you can't vote or you're not smart enough
Speaker 2: to vote, or black people as slaves and so not worthy,
Speaker 2: you would have created a society. If the right people
Speaker 2: are at the table, you'd have created a society. It
Speaker 2: was probably more equal for everybody. And so, you know,
Speaker 2: going back and looking at that piece of history or
Speaker 2: looking at I just I couldn't understand as I would
Speaker 2: go out for the foundation and meet so many women
Speaker 2: in so many communities in Africa Southeast Asia who knew
Speaker 2: about contraceptives and had had them and no longer did,
Speaker 2: and they kept saying, why why don't we have them?
Speaker 2: You have them in your country, why don't we have them?
Speaker 2: We used to? And as I had to literally learn
Speaker 2: the history of contraceptives around the world, what had happened
Speaker 2: with those and even where my own religion I grew
Speaker 2: up Catholic, where the Catholic Church had not wanted women
Speaker 2: to have contraceptives and blocked even funding for that. And
Speaker 2: yet we know that if a woman has access to contraceptives,
Speaker 2: she's healthier, her family or kids are healthier, and the
Speaker 2: family's wealthier, and it lifts them out of poverty. And
Speaker 2: so I had to learn that whole history before I
Speaker 2: was willing to say, okay, am I going to step
Speaker 2: into this very controversial issue. I'm Catholic, I have a
Speaker 2: deep faith, but what's the right way to step in
Speaker 2: also that maintains my integrity and what I've seen, but
Speaker 2: could potentially move this issue forward because it literally is
Speaker 2: a life and death situation often for women if they
Speaker 2: have their children too close together and their bodies aren't ready.
Speaker 1: Hey, everyone, it's Jay here. My wife and I have
Speaker 1: had so much fun creating our own sparkling tea Juni
Speaker 1: and I've got big news for you. It's at Target
Speaker 1: and we'd love your support. If you can go out
Speaker 1: grab a Juny. You'll be adding adaptogens and neotropics into
Speaker 1: your life with mood boosting properties aimed at promoting a
Speaker 1: balanced and happy mind. Through our commitment to our wellness
Speaker 1: journey and striving to fuel our bodies with the healthiest ingredients.
Speaker 1: It's been our purpose to make healthy choices accessible for all,
Speaker 1: which is why Juni is now on at Target. So
Speaker 1: head to our store locator at Drinkjuni dot com and
Speaker 1: find Juni at a Target near you. How did you
Speaker 1: navigate that? It sounds like such a you know, kind
Speaker 1: of challenging situation with your personal values and beliefs historically
Speaker 1: mixed in with the research you're doing that how do
Speaker 1: you walk those difficult parts? Because to me, that's often
Speaker 1: where we all find ourselves. Like, I don't think there's
Speaker 1: that much clarity. It's not always black and white, it's
Speaker 1: not always easy. It's not always like this is the
Speaker 1: obvious path, although we may try and make it that way.
Speaker 1: Sometimes often there's so much more complexity in even trying
Speaker 1: to change the world or having a positive impact in
Speaker 1: the world. How do you tread that carefully? Also recognizing
Speaker 1: that there'll still be backlash.
Speaker 2: So this was all around twenty eleven. In twenty twelve
Speaker 2: when I knew we needed to have more contraceptives in
Speaker 2: the world, We needed to further this issue, and I
Speaker 2: knew the Foundation could play a role in that. And
Speaker 2: I started to realize that probably my voice and that
Speaker 2: would make a difference as a female, and I will
Speaker 2: be honest, I was terrified, terrified to speak out on
Speaker 2: this issue. Yes I was using contraceptives, Yes I was
Speaker 2: educating my children about their bodies and what they should
Speaker 2: do long term. But to step out on the world
Speaker 2: stage and say this is what I believe and know
Speaker 2: I would be attacked by my own church, you know
Speaker 2: as a little girl, where I sat in the pews
Speaker 2: you know, and saw who was at the top of
Speaker 2: the church like I wasn't something I wanted. And so
Speaker 2: I had to do several things. One is I took
Speaker 2: a lot of time in quiet to think about what
Speaker 2: do I believe? Why would I do this? What are
Speaker 2: the ramifications for me, my children, my parents, my family,
Speaker 2: What are the rammications for the foundation? Who can I
Speaker 2: have support me that will help me learn and be
Speaker 2: and maybe do this in the right way. I also
Speaker 2: went back and questioned my faith a lot. I started
Speaker 2: listening to a very liberal Catholic priest, Richard Rohr in
Speaker 2: his writings. That was incredibly helpful to me to realize
Speaker 2: you could push against some of that some of those
Speaker 2: man made rules. And I listened to a lot and
Speaker 2: read a lot of Brene Brown's work, you know, Darren
Speaker 2: greatly was hugely helpful to me because I literally felt like,
Speaker 2: I'm going to step off of precipice and talk about
Speaker 2: this issue. And I did eventually get attacked by the
Speaker 2: Catholic Church and attacked from both the left and the right.
Speaker 2: But it was okay. And the reason it was okay
Speaker 2: was one I had already talked to my kids about it,
Speaker 2: talked to my parents, the people I cared about the most.
Speaker 2: But also I knew what I had seen in the
Speaker 2: developing world. I knew what women were asking me, and
Speaker 2: I knew this tool made a difference in their life.
Speaker 2: And so how could I have this platform and be
Speaker 2: in this position and them be willing to share their
Speaker 2: lives and their stories with me and me not use
Speaker 2: my voice that that didn't make any sense. So I
Speaker 2: really wrestled with all of that for problem ten twelve
Speaker 2: months before I then was willing to come out. And
Speaker 2: again I had a group of small group of female
Speaker 2: friends around that I said, Oh, I'm going to do this,
Speaker 2: and it's going to be scary, but I could sort
Speaker 2: of talk it through and work it through. Right. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and then when you take that one courageous step and
Speaker 2: then it does start to snowball and it goes better
Speaker 2: than you think in some ways, worse in some ways
Speaker 2: than you thought, but Okay, then you're not as at
Speaker 2: least for me, I wasn't afraid then for other courageous
Speaker 2: steps I needed to take in my life later on.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think there's so much wisdom the idea that
Speaker 1: first of all, knowing who you are and what matters
Speaker 1: to you at a very core level. I think a
Speaker 1: lot of us sometimes do things because we think they
Speaker 1: look good, or they might work out, or someone will
Speaker 1: but knowing that I feel this is important and it
Speaker 1: matters to me. I love the idea of what you're saying,
Speaker 1: of speaking to your friends the people around you and
Speaker 1: recognizing that it's not all oh, it's going to be
Speaker 1: great and going to love it. No, actually, there are
Speaker 1: going to be consequences, ramifications, challenges, and then the idea
Speaker 1: that it took you ten to twelve months. I love
Speaker 1: hearing that because I think we often think that our
Speaker 1: best decisions or big decisions are instant and we know
Speaker 1: it and you kind of flow in the moment. But
Speaker 1: often we have to sit with these things and see
Speaker 1: how they sit with us in silence across a period
Speaker 1: of time.
Speaker 2: Definitely, And so I love.
Speaker 1: Hearing all of that. I think that's really valuable. You've
Speaker 1: talked about, you know, tell me about your experiences with
Speaker 1: imposter syndrome, because I can imagine even when you're trying
Speaker 1: to make these changes, and maybe even earlier and in life,
Speaker 1: maybe what was your earliest experience of imposter syndrome?
Speaker 2: Oh gosh, probably at the Foundation, Probably the first ten
Speaker 2: years of the Foundation's life. I felt like an impostor.
Speaker 2: Here I am. I'm a computer scientist. I knew that background.
Speaker 2: I had gone to business schools, so I knew economics.
Speaker 2: But here we are in a whole different field. I mean,
Speaker 2: I'm literally it's a whole second career for me. I'm
Speaker 2: learning about biology, I'm trying to understand from people in
Speaker 2: global health what can be done. I'm learning from doctors,
Speaker 2: I'm learning from community health workers on the ground. But
Speaker 2: I just I didn't feel like I could ever know
Speaker 2: enough to speak credibly on this topic because I didn't
Speaker 2: go to school in global health, you know, or I
Speaker 2: wasn't a doctor. But it took some time, and again
Speaker 2: someone actually inside the foundation who was working for me
Speaker 2: at the time, came to me and wanted me to
Speaker 2: speak out on something. And I said, no, no, I
Speaker 2: don't feel like I know enough. And this woman said
Speaker 2: to me, she said, are you kidding? Just look at
Speaker 2: all the traveling you have done, Like go back and
Speaker 2: let's look at all the trips you've done and all
Speaker 2: the knowledge you've amassed. She said, how many people have
Speaker 2: ever done that kind of travel in that way to
Speaker 2: be in these communities and to be at the tables
Speaker 2: where the scientists. I could come back and scientists would
Speaker 2: explain things to me and I could ask. And I thought, oh,
Speaker 2: my gosh, I guess I do know enough. And I'll
Speaker 2: never know everything. No one will ever know anything everything
Speaker 2: on the history of the Earth. But I know enough
Speaker 2: to know what I know deeply, at a core, core level,
Speaker 2: and to speak those truths. And I started to realize
Speaker 2: there would be value in a woman doing that because
Speaker 2: I could speak on behalf of so many of these
Speaker 2: women that I had met and who'd invited me into
Speaker 2: their homes or shown me the tough circumstances of their lives.
Speaker 2: And I thought, Okay, I've just got to go to
Speaker 2: get over this. If they've spoken to me, I need
Speaker 2: to speak their truths in the world. And so again,
Speaker 2: I think the first Brene Brown book I ever picked
Speaker 2: up was The Gifts of Imperfection, and I learned to
Speaker 2: embrace all these places in me that I do see
Speaker 2: as imperfect. I still see as imperfect. I am an
Speaker 2: imperfect person. You're an imperfect person. We all are. But
Speaker 2: to embrace those parts of myself instead of push them
Speaker 2: away and say, but I'm probably enough, still enough to
Speaker 2: be this messenger.
Speaker 1: Yeah, what advice would you give to people who are
Speaker 1: listening or watching and have that imposter syndrome? It's so
Speaker 1: easy to there's goodness in that belief, Like I've always
Speaker 1: found that when I do doubt myself, there's actually beauty
Speaker 1: in that because it's a humility and accepting that I
Speaker 1: don't know. There's a there's a goodness in accepting that
Speaker 1: I don't have everything figured out. I actually think we
Speaker 1: often play down that so much today. We make it
Speaker 1: sound like it's terrible to have imposter syndrome. But to me,
Speaker 1: anyone who has a conscience or a reflection mechanism will
Speaker 1: will feel that pretty much whenever they grow into a
Speaker 1: new phase. So I find it very useful to display
Speaker 1: to me what's missing, what I've not learned yet, what
Speaker 1: I need to study, what I need to become educated about.
Speaker 1: A focus on how would you guide and advise people
Speaker 1: who are sitting here listening to us, and they're thinking, Manda,
Speaker 1: I don't feel like i'm enough, I feel like I'm
Speaker 1: not well placed, I don't know enough, I'm not good enough,
Speaker 1: I'm not whatever else it may be. How would you
Speaker 1: guide them through that?
Speaker 2: Well, I think it's what you said. You have to
Speaker 2: actually see the beauty in the imperfections. Somebody one time
Speaker 2: gave me a heart that had all of these sort
Speaker 2: of holes in it in a funny way, and I
Speaker 2: was going through something really tough, and she's part of
Speaker 2: my spiritual group. I'm also in a spiritual group, non
Speaker 2: a nominational spiritual group. And she gave it to me,
Speaker 2: and she said, Melinda, this is probably like your heart
Speaker 2: right now, like you thought it was kind of perfect,
Speaker 2: but no, it's imperfect. But it's those holes and those
Speaker 2: difficult places that have formed you into who you are
Speaker 2: now as a person. And so I would say to people,
Speaker 2: start by looking at what messages you grew up with
Speaker 2: in your home, what messages are you getting in your workplace,
Speaker 2: what messages are society giving you? And are those possibly
Speaker 2: not true? And start to say to yourself, yes, there
Speaker 2: are places in me that are imperfect. And I agree
Speaker 2: with you. I think looking at those helps us remain
Speaker 2: humble and not narcissistic or in our egoic self in
Speaker 2: embracing those and saying, but there's beauty in those and
Speaker 2: what can I learn from them? But I do think
Speaker 2: once you embrace those parts of yourself, at least for me,
Speaker 2: I just know I feel more integrated and more like
Speaker 2: a whole person. Right. And then sometimes you also need
Speaker 2: to go back and make amends. There are times where
Speaker 2: you've really made some mistakes or said something hurtful to someone,
Speaker 2: And once you embrace those pieces going back and making
Speaker 2: amends also, I think again helps you feel better about
Speaker 2: your core self because then you are living even more
Speaker 2: in the truth and the beauty of who you hopefully
Speaker 2: want to be.
Speaker 1: What else do you do in your spiritual group? And
Speaker 1: how did you what does that look like? As people,
Speaker 1: I'm sure listening and watching you also want to have
Speaker 1: a spiritual group, a community, a tribe. What does that
Speaker 1: look like? What do you do and how does it function?
Speaker 2: Yeah, so there are eight of us women that are
Speaker 2: in this group. We formed it in two thousand and one.
Speaker 2: At the time, we all had small children, you know,
Speaker 2: going through school, and we were of different religions. Actually
Speaker 2: one or two were just no religion at all, and
Speaker 2: we just agreed that we would meet monthly second Wednesday
Speaker 2: of the month and we would pick a reading or
Speaker 2: a book and we would all be with it, sit
Speaker 2: with it, read it, whatever it was. We all committed
Speaker 2: to taking some time in silence every day, even if
Speaker 2: it was only ten minutes, and then coming to the
Speaker 2: group and having it be a trusted circle where we
Speaker 2: could share our innermost thoughts about that spiritual reading, about
Speaker 2: something going on in our life. And it just became
Speaker 2: a group that became central to my life. And I
Speaker 2: would say vice versa, I know these women incredibly well
Speaker 2: and their trials and tribulations and losing a parent or
Speaker 2: not sure they're going to how the marriage is going
Speaker 2: to go, or gosh, I didn't parent very well in
Speaker 2: that moment, or here's where some thing has touched me
Speaker 2: deeply in my life nature. And then we go on
Speaker 2: a silent retreat at least once a year, and we're
Speaker 2: in silence, usually for two or three days. Sometimes we'll
Speaker 2: have a leader come and guide us through that. Other
Speaker 2: times we've done it enough now that we kind of
Speaker 2: go on our own. But it's just a place of deep,
Speaker 2: close community where I would say we can touch one
Speaker 2: another's souls and touch our own souls.
Speaker 1: Wow, and you've been doing that since two thousand and one.
Speaker 2: Uh huh, Wow, that's over twenty years.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's unbelievable. Yeah, what is with the community like that?
Speaker 1: How do you select who gets to be a part
Speaker 1: of it? Because I guess life was very different twenty
Speaker 1: three years ago. Everyone goes through so many different evolutions
Speaker 1: of life and phases. How do you pick who stays,
Speaker 1: who leaves, who goes? And build that together. How does
Speaker 1: that work well.
Speaker 2: At the time that we formed the group, we didn't
Speaker 2: all know each other, so there was connective tissue between
Speaker 2: I would say, three of us who then brought in
Speaker 2: others into the group, and we formed enough trust over
Speaker 2: time that we knew, you know that the information wouldn't
Speaker 2: go outside the group. You didn't go tell your spouse
Speaker 2: or you're certainly your children or your mother. And we
Speaker 2: had one hiccup with one person in the group who
Speaker 2: it just over time that person was clear wanted to
Speaker 2: spin out, and so she did. That was okay, But
Speaker 2: it just became this place of trust and life lessons
Speaker 2: and sort of milestones. We've been through so much together.
Speaker 2: And I wouldn't say that we all are best friends,
Speaker 2: like some of us are closer than others, or the
Speaker 2: group's reform based on somebody losing a parent, or but
Speaker 2: we're just there for each other, like we have each
Speaker 2: other's backs. And it was when I was thinking about
Speaker 2: coming out on these on talking about contraceptives and being
Speaker 2: a bit more public for the foundation, which I hadn't
Speaker 2: been before, I talked it through with this group first.
Speaker 2: They were one of the first places I said I'm
Speaker 2: going to do this, and I am terrified. I'm absolutely terrified,
Speaker 2: and I knew they could almost be a trust counsel
Speaker 2: for me to tell me the truth of well, look here,
Speaker 2: be careful there, know you're going to be okay. And
Speaker 2: it's almost like we kind of grew up together.
Speaker 1: That's beautiful, And these were all peers. They're just at
Speaker 1: the time, they're just people who're meeting because I think
Speaker 1: often we feel like we have to be soiunded by
Speaker 1: like everyone who's ten years ahead of us and fifteen
Speaker 1: years ahead of us, and everyone has to be a mentor.
Speaker 1: But we underestimate just how much our peers and the
Speaker 1: people that are going through life at the same time
Speaker 1: at the same pace are so powerful in our lives,
Speaker 1: and we underestimate the people that are almost around us.
Speaker 2: We do sometimes, and you know, many of the women
Speaker 2: in this group are maybe five or six years older
Speaker 2: than I am, but you also don't know like one
Speaker 2: of them that's very close to me in age, her
Speaker 2: husband was one of my best friends and we lost
Speaker 2: him at a age thirty seven. I mean, who expects
Speaker 2: that you know, and you're in your thirties and you
Speaker 2: lose shoes or husband. I lose one of my best friends.
Speaker 2: So these moments also, I think, form you and you know,
Speaker 2: help shape who you become. So yeah, it doesn't always
Speaker 2: have to be somebody older. And in fact, because my
Speaker 2: youngest daughter I had the youngest of all the children
Speaker 2: in the group, my last one was the youngest. I
Speaker 2: ended up also, though not in my spiritual group, but
Speaker 2: with other friends than who were younger than me. And
Speaker 2: that was lovely too. There's a lot of wisdom there.
Speaker 2: And you know, I have three other siblings. I am
Speaker 2: extraordinarily close to my brother who's ten years younger than me.
Speaker 2: There's so much wisdom there. So I think it has
Speaker 2: much more to do with is the person on a
Speaker 2: growth path? Right? And then can we mutually learn from
Speaker 2: one another?
Speaker 1: Absolutely, you've talked about having an addiction to perfection, Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I think that's something that a lot of us
Speaker 1: deal with. What's your relationship with perfectionism? Now?
Speaker 2: Well, it was awful? It's like a how bad was it?
Speaker 2: It was terrible?
Speaker 1: Well, go true?
Speaker 2: What would it look like, you know, dressing right, saying
Speaker 2: the right thing in you know, at even like a
Speaker 2: dinner party or a cocktail party or or something like this.
Speaker 2: What if I messed up and said the wrong thing
Speaker 2: on a podcast, oh my gosh, you know. And so
Speaker 2: it was horrible. It was absolutely horrible. It was zapping
Speaker 2: my energy, and it was driving the people around me.
Speaker 2: I finally realized crazy too, like somebody you know, who
Speaker 2: would help prepare me for something at the foundation, if
Speaker 2: I was going on a trip, you know, I was
Speaker 2: grabbing all these facts and figures, and it just was
Speaker 2: so unnecessary. And so when I finally really looked at
Speaker 2: it and again read this book on Gifts of Imperfection
Speaker 2: and started to write down all the places that was
Speaker 2: coming up in my life or start to notice it, like,
Speaker 2: oh my gosh, before I leave my closet, I'm you know,
Speaker 2: it's taking me ten extra minutes. How silly is that?
Speaker 2: Like I could have ten minutes to go be in
Speaker 2: silence or be with my kids or and so as
Speaker 2: soon as I started to identify all the places, I
Speaker 2: could break them down. And it doesn't mean it doesn't
Speaker 2: still come up. I was going to a very small
Speaker 2: dinner party last week with a couple that I really
Speaker 2: respected but didn't know well, and I was going with
Speaker 2: two other girlfriends, and literally the hour before that, I
Speaker 2: went to get a bit of time in quiet, and
Speaker 2: I realized that feeling of not knowing enough was coming
Speaker 2: up that perfection, so I need to know this. What
Speaker 2: if they asked me this about the foundation? Oh my gosh.
Speaker 2: And then I just was like, no, stop, just stop,
Speaker 2: I'm going to be enough, and I'd be some things
Speaker 2: I can't answer tonight that I for you know, I
Speaker 2: forgot that particular statistic, you know, because I haven't been
Speaker 2: in that country in a while. But so what once
Speaker 2: you can start to let it go and again I
Speaker 2: could just say, okay, well I'll just be myself, then
Speaker 2: then it's fine.
Speaker 1: And how do you stop that recurring voice that judges you,
Speaker 1: criticizes you, maybe even afterward says to you, oh, you
Speaker 1: shouldn't have forgotten that statistic. Oh if you would have
Speaker 1: said this, then imagine how it would have gone. I
Speaker 1: think it's hard enough to quiet the voice before you
Speaker 1: go let alone the voice that comes afterwards that kind
Speaker 1: of puts you down even further and says you could
Speaker 1: have done so much better, you should have done better,
Speaker 1: And especially as someone who's come from a high performing
Speaker 1: college and job and everything else, like, how is that?
Speaker 1: How is your relationship with that voice evolved.
Speaker 2: I used to get that so much after an event
Speaker 2: or something i'd done. It almost never comes up anymore.
Speaker 2: It maybe comes up maybe how I stop judging myself
Speaker 2: and when I stop, and I also stop judging other people.
Speaker 2: When I learned to not judge other people, I realized
Speaker 2: you have to look at when you judge somebody else
Speaker 2: in your fingers putting this way, you know, like Byron
Speaker 2: Katie says, there's three fingers pointing this way. And so
Speaker 2: I realized if I had a judgment about even say
Speaker 2: a friend, right, well, gosh, I needed to look at that.
Speaker 2: Is that judgment really about them? Or is it about me?
Speaker 2: And so often the thing I might be picking on
Speaker 2: in my mind about them was actually about me. So
Speaker 2: I had to learn to say to myself, Okay, what
Speaker 2: is it in myself that I don't like? And can
Speaker 2: I just be okay with that? And so, boy, I
Speaker 2: believe me. I've made so many mistakes. My kids tease
Speaker 2: me all the time. I'm terrible with people's names, and
Speaker 2: yet it's a sign of respect. I think if you
Speaker 2: use somebody's name, they have endless stories about how I've
Speaker 2: made up you know, how I messed up their high
Speaker 2: school friends' names, but it's okay. I was trying to
Speaker 2: be respectful. I'm human and it's huge. And I also
Speaker 2: think the more I can humanize myself in front of
Speaker 2: other people, the more I take down the barrier between
Speaker 2: me and them and we can see we are just humans.
Speaker 1: Right, absolutely absolutely.
Speaker 2: What do you judge yourself? Do you later say to yourself, Oh,
Speaker 2: I should have said this, I should have said that.
Speaker 1: I think it took me a long time to get
Speaker 1: to a point of giving myself grace and not making
Speaker 1: myself feel that I had to be anyone else apart
Speaker 1: from myself, and that the perfect performance wasn't actually satisfying
Speaker 1: to me. It just gave me more to have to
Speaker 1: live up to. And so when I first started doing
Speaker 1: what I do, it felt like in every room, in
Speaker 1: every conversation, I had to say something magical and miraculous
Speaker 1: and profound, and often I'd say something very basic, yet
Speaker 1: it would feel that way. And sometimes I'd say the
Speaker 1: most profound thing and it would be seen as basic.
Speaker 1: And I started to realize very quickly that if you
Speaker 1: were spending most of the time in your head just
Speaker 1: trying to figure out how to be a certain way
Speaker 1: or come across a certain way, which is what all
Speaker 1: of us do. Sure, you actually lose the opportunity to
Speaker 1: be present and have the experience and probably say something
Speaker 1: and hear things that actually have an impact on other
Speaker 1: people because you're actually there. And so it was learning
Speaker 1: to trust myself and trust that whether I knew the
Speaker 1: right thing to say or I didn't know that that
Speaker 1: was perfect just as it was. But I think that
Speaker 1: that grace is something we have to develop and cultivate
Speaker 1: and build because it's so natural. I was just I
Speaker 1: was just a gold and Sex. On Monday, We're doing
Speaker 1: a talks of Goldman Sex and it was all around
Speaker 1: the benefits of mindfulness mixed with a high performance culture.
Speaker 1: And so it's like, how does that work if you're
Speaker 1: a high performing trader? What does it mean to practice
Speaker 1: mindfulness and grace? There's not a lot of space for
Speaker 1: grace if you're losing twenty million dollars or whatever else.
Speaker 1: Maybe in two hundred million it could be so much more.
Speaker 1: So what does that look like to give yourself grace?
Speaker 1: And I think we equate grace to weakness. We think
Speaker 1: if I'm kind to myself, then that's weakness. And actually
Speaker 1: I found that guilt blocks growth for sure.
Speaker 2: That guilt doesn't make you grow.
Speaker 1: Guilt can maybe make you feel bad for a second
Speaker 1: and push you in the right direction, but over a
Speaker 1: sustained period of.
Speaker 2: Time, guilt will drain you totally.
Speaker 1: And so I think grace does what guilt kant. It
Speaker 1: says I'm going to give some space to where I'm
Speaker 1: at so that I can get back on the horse,
Speaker 1: Whereas if I just guilt myself, I'm going to keep
Speaker 1: pushing myself down into the ground. I'll never get back up.
Speaker 2: My thinking on guilt is that sometimes it can point
Speaker 2: to where you're off of your integrated self, and it's
Speaker 2: very important to pay attention to read. So for me,
Speaker 2: when it comes up in silence, I try to really
Speaker 2: look at Okay, was I off of who I want
Speaker 2: to be? Grace is one of my absolute favorite words,
Speaker 2: and it's something that in difficult situations I actually pray for,
Speaker 2: like I will pray for just bring some grace to
Speaker 2: this moment, whatever that means. And I think so often again,
Speaker 2: I think sometimes if we're trying to say the right thing,
Speaker 2: or do the right thing, or not say the wrong thing,
Speaker 2: we're kind of actually in that egoic part of ourselves
Speaker 2: as a point as opposed to saying, just let grace
Speaker 2: come through through whatever is meant to be, let it
Speaker 2: happen in this moment. And I will say, for me,
Speaker 2: because I have traveled a lot to these rural settings,
Speaker 2: low income countries and communities, I will often pray for
Speaker 2: grace before I go in and for the conversation, to
Speaker 2: try and drop any judgments I have so I can
Speaker 2: just meet the person where they are at, and they
Speaker 2: can meet me and I can see is there something
Speaker 2: that can come out of this of beauty a learning
Speaker 2: that maybe we can work on or they can work
Speaker 2: on or But yeah, grace is actually one of my
Speaker 2: absolute favorite words.
Speaker 1: Well, I love that. How hard was it to give
Speaker 1: yourself grace through the divorce? Because I feel like that
Speaker 1: feels like for a lot of people can feel like
Speaker 1: one of the biggest failures, challenges, stresses. It's one of
Speaker 1: the hardest transitions and changes that you go through in life.
Speaker 1: How hard was it at that time to give yourself grace?
Speaker 1: What did that look like?
Speaker 2: Yeah, that was the hardest thing I had ever been
Speaker 2: through my life. Let me be really clear, about that, Well,
Speaker 2: you have an image. I thought I was going to
Speaker 2: be married for life. I thought, you know, i'd be
Speaker 2: married fifty plus years. And so all of a sudden,
Speaker 2: you see that even despite very very much work and counseling,
Speaker 2: that what you had doesn't actually exist, and that for me,
Speaker 2: I couldn't go forward. That I just there wasn't enough
Speaker 2: trust any longer, and so it wasn't something I wished for.
Speaker 2: I certainly didn't think I would be in my late
Speaker 2: fifties and be divorced, you know, like I didn't. It
Speaker 2: was okay that people were divorced. I didn't have some
Speaker 2: problem with that, but I didn't know that was going
Speaker 2: to be me. And it was incredibly challenging. I've never
Speaker 2: cried so much my whole life. And I prayed a
Speaker 2: lot for grace, for grace for myself, for grace for
Speaker 2: my children, for grace for the situation that we would
Speaker 2: somehow get through this as a family behind the scenes,
Speaker 2: and hope to God it wouldn't be public before we
Speaker 2: were finished, because I knew that would be a whole
Speaker 2: nother thing. And I think sometimes the only way I
Speaker 2: got through was because I do have a faith, and
Speaker 2: thank God. I had close, close friends who I could
Speaker 2: talk to on the hardest days, and a good therapist.
Speaker 2: But it is not something I would wish on any family.
Speaker 2: It is a very, very difficult thing to go through
Speaker 2: because you're pulling apart something that has been tightly woven
Speaker 2: together and that you believed in. And I will say though,
Speaker 2: on the other side, there can be a lot of beauty,
Speaker 2: you know, once you get through the rough patches and
Speaker 2: things finally kind of calm down for the whole family
Speaker 2: and everybody. On the other side, there can be a
Speaker 2: lot of beauty. So I never thought i'd be in
Speaker 2: my late fifties, I'm about to turn sixty and be
Speaker 2: single again, right Who expects that? But I didn't. But hey,
Speaker 2: it's pretty great too, you know. And so I look
Speaker 2: for I just I look in the hardest of hard times,
Speaker 2: I say to myself, just pray for grace and know
Speaker 2: there'll be something that comes out of this struggle. I'd
Speaker 2: read a book years ago, many years ago called Awakening
Speaker 2: Joy by James Bross Bras and Shoshana Alexander, and one
Speaker 2: of the things I had learned from that book I
Speaker 2: carried it around in my briefcase for years, or my
Speaker 2: dotebag is that you can hold joy in sadness side
Speaker 2: by side. I had somehow gotten to that point in life,
Speaker 2: you know, in my forties, where I had thought, oh,
Speaker 2: there's these amazing joy moments or these really sad low moments. No,
Speaker 2: you can hold both side by side and realize that
Speaker 2: even when you're really sad, there's going to be joy again.
Speaker 2: It might take ten minutes, it might take ten months,
Speaker 2: it might take ten years, but there's joy and both exist.
Speaker 2: And I started to learn to be able to hold
Speaker 2: that duality.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's so interesting to me. I was sweeing to
Speaker 1: someone yesterday who'd just broken up with a five year relationship,
Speaker 1: not not married, just to partner, and they were saying
Speaker 1: to me, they were like, I know there'll be better days,
Speaker 1: but I can't see how right now. Like I know it,
Speaker 1: but I can't see how right now. And I think
Speaker 1: that that discomfort is probably one of the most piercing
Speaker 1: emotions that you can have, because sometimes people even go
Speaker 1: as far as they'll never be another good day. But
Speaker 1: sometimes we can see there's a good day, but we
Speaker 1: don't know when. Walk me through the emotion of when
Speaker 1: you know something is ending, and your vision of what
Speaker 1: something was is crumbling, and you don't know what that
Speaker 1: next phase looks like. Like, walk us through the emotional
Speaker 1: navigation of that, because I feel like that's what so
Speaker 1: many people struggle with people. It's one thing being like, okay,
Speaker 1: this is ending now, but there's so much when that
Speaker 1: penny drops al much like when that emotion drops from
Speaker 1: your head to your heart, like Okay, this is not
Speaker 1: working out anymore. But then it kind of goes here
Speaker 1: and you go, oh, that that's really uncomfortable, and then
Speaker 1: you actually have to follow through with it. Walk us
Speaker 1: through navigating that. What does that take?
Speaker 2: I have had to learn that last ten years, I
Speaker 2: would say, to really feel deeply feel my emotions in
Speaker 2: my body, like that emotion you just described from here
Speaker 2: to it's not working to drops, as you said, into
Speaker 2: your heart and I got to make a change. It
Speaker 2: literally felt like a stab in the heart, like I
Speaker 2: could feel it here like and so I am. I
Speaker 2: just knew it was something. It was such a such
Speaker 2: an enormous consequential decision that I needed to take time
Speaker 2: with it, and I needed to be kind of myself.
Speaker 2: I didn't want to. I wanted to minimize if I could,
Speaker 2: the pain to those around me. But it's just it's
Speaker 2: gut wrenching. That's probably the best. It feels like a
Speaker 2: stab in the heart, least to me, a stab in
Speaker 2: the heart and wrenching because it's not what you want
Speaker 2: to do. But that's when I think your friends come
Speaker 2: in and they are the lights and the moments of grace,
Speaker 2: and they can hold out for you and remind you
Speaker 2: the hope on the other side. You're going to be okay.
Speaker 2: I know it's going to be okay, But I'm sure
Speaker 2: there's going to be something beautiful on the other side,
Speaker 2: even though none of us know what that is.
Speaker 1: What's something you know now that you wish you knew.
Speaker 2: Then you will find happiness again. You know, you can
Speaker 2: feel like I had days where I thought, I don't
Speaker 2: know if I'll ever be happy again. I just I
Speaker 2: don't know. You will absolutely find happiness, and you'll find
Speaker 2: happiness in sometimes really unexpected ways or unexpected places, right,
Speaker 2: And I don't know. At least you learn. At least
Speaker 2: for me, I learned to appreciate the world more, appreciate
Speaker 2: my friends more, and my family more being in nature. Yeah,
Speaker 2: so you'll be happy again, you just can't feel it
Speaker 2: in the moment.
Speaker 1: Thank you, Yeah, I know, I'm I really hope that
Speaker 1: everyone's listening and watching that resonates with them and being
Speaker 1: able to find that grace, being able to navigate those
Speaker 1: challenging emotions feeling in their body, because yeah, it's just
Speaker 1: when you hear someone say it when they're actually going
Speaker 1: through it. It's Yeah, it's one of those things where even
Speaker 1: your closest friends don't even know the right things to
Speaker 1: say because.
Speaker 2: And sometimes there isn't the right thing to say. I mean,
Speaker 2: it's also like when someone passes away, right, sometimes you
Speaker 2: just need somebody to walk with you, or somebody to
Speaker 2: just cry with you, you.
Speaker 1: Know, and.
Speaker 2: There are no words. But I always know too when
Speaker 2: my friends step in in those moments, I will step
Speaker 2: in for them or for somebody else right later on.
Speaker 2: And so again I learned through the process that you
Speaker 2: actually have to accept help.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: I wasn't so great at that. I was good at
Speaker 2: helping other people, but not so good at accepting it myself.
Speaker 2: And I had to learn to accept that help because
Speaker 2: I it isn't something I could go through alone.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 2: I think sometimes we make the mistake world of thinking,
Speaker 2: you know, while soldier on, I can do this alone. No,
Speaker 2: I mean we can only really do things in community.
Speaker 2: And it takes community to feel held and secure and
Speaker 2: safe enough to move forward in whatever it is we're doing,
Speaker 2: our professional pursuit, our love life, our parenting of our children.
Speaker 2: If we're going to do it well, it takes community.
Speaker 1: Yeah, what was the most recent thing you asked? Helpful?
Speaker 2: I was struggling with something about a week ago, and
Speaker 2: so it's personal though, and so I asked a friend
Speaker 2: to go for a walk. I just said, could we
Speaker 2: walk and talk? Like I have something I really need
Speaker 2: to work through here. And yeah, so I'll pick up
Speaker 2: a phone call a friend say can we go for
Speaker 2: a walk, or I'll text somebody right, And you know,
Speaker 2: we have ways of telling each other can drop everything
Speaker 2: versus okay, this can wait till tomorrow, you know. But
Speaker 2: for sure, I do it all the time, and I hope,
Speaker 2: I hope I'm there and have the backs of my
Speaker 2: friends as well.
Speaker 1: So wonderful to dive into some of the issues that
Speaker 1: you're focusing right now through the work that you think
Speaker 1: of the biggest issues facing the world from your perspective,
Speaker 1: if you had to, if you could narrow down to
Speaker 1: three things that you're like, these are the three things
Speaker 1: you're trying to solve right now, which would have scaled impact.
Speaker 1: What would they be? What are they?
Speaker 2: I'd say it's really one thing, and it's making sure
Speaker 2: that women and people of color can walk into their
Speaker 2: full power everywhere in the world. And we need to
Speaker 2: get women and people of color to all places in society,
Speaker 2: whether that's in politics, because they make different policies, state houses, congress, parliaments,
Speaker 2: we need to make sure they're empowered. Financially, we do
Speaker 2: not invest in women led businesses or people of colored
Speaker 2: businesses the way we do in male businesses, white men's businesses.
Speaker 2: That's just the truth and the VC community. And then culturally,
Speaker 2: we need to have more of those stories come forward.
Speaker 2: I feel like if we don't advance the world on
Speaker 2: behalf of everybody else, we're going to just keep falling backwards.
Speaker 2: We're going to keep falling backwards into these potholes that
Speaker 2: we have, and so I would like to see, you know,
Speaker 2: more women be able to step in their full power
Speaker 2: everywhere in the world. And it does it's hard. It
Speaker 2: means breaking down social norms in certain places. It means
Speaker 2: investing in women led businesses, it means thinking about things
Speaker 2: differently in the workplace. But I think the world would
Speaker 2: be so much better off if the people making our
Speaker 2: policies looked like the rest of society, all of society.
Speaker 2: So in the US that means, you know, having more
Speaker 2: Latinas who are there, more people of color who are
Speaker 2: making policy, more women making policy. We would just reflect
Speaker 2: more all of society instead of a certain echelon of society.
Speaker 2: And you know, it's still for instance, just to give
Speaker 2: you one example, I go places in the world and
Speaker 2: people just kind of scratch their head and say, the
Speaker 2: US has no paid family medical leave policy, no family
Speaker 2: leave policy, Like don't you care about your children? You know?
Speaker 2: And then you go to place like Sweden or Norway.
Speaker 2: I've had it for thirty years. And it's not just
Speaker 2: the women. The men take time off at the birth
Speaker 2: of their child. Well guess what, Then they participate more,
Speaker 2: They're more involved with the child, things are more balanced
Speaker 2: in the home and so but it's because we don't
Speaker 2: have enough women in our US Congress and Senate and
Speaker 2: other places to be able to create those policies, right
Speaker 2: we have them in thirteen states now, but we don't
Speaker 2: have a federal policy yet. That just shouldn't be not
Speaker 2: in this day of working parents where most couples both
Speaker 2: parents are working if they have kids.
Speaker 1: And systemically, what does that actually take like to actually
Speaker 1: achieve that, Like, what is that? What is the actual
Speaker 1: work has to go and behind the scenes to make
Speaker 1: that happen, because I think we only ever hear about
Speaker 1: it if it becomes news, like you're saying if someone
Speaker 1: gets voted in or someone gets a position of power.
Speaker 1: But what's happening years and years and days and days
Speaker 1: behind the scenes to make that happen, Like, what does
Speaker 1: that actually take?
Speaker 2: It means there are lots of groups that organize and
Speaker 2: work on this, but it means funding women's political campaigns,
Speaker 2: supporting them when they get harassed on the campaign trail,
Speaker 2: giving them the tools so that when they get into
Speaker 2: these halls of power, they know how to make good policy.
Speaker 2: Right in the past, we just have not done that.
Speaker 2: We haven't done it at scale. So that's one example.
Speaker 2: In the venture capital space, it means really looking at
Speaker 2: women's businesses and seeing just because they don't look like
Speaker 2: the other businesses we've seen these are valuable businesses or
Speaker 2: people of color. But we have to break down the
Speaker 2: bias that has been there that says, oh, well, you
Speaker 2: don't take enough risk, or I've never seen a business
Speaker 2: like this before, or maybe you're not trained up in
Speaker 2: the right way. We have all these sort of biased
Speaker 2: excuses instead of saying, no, let's fund these businesses. And
Speaker 2: then what happens is you'll have women and people of
Speaker 2: color if you have them in all places in society
Speaker 2: at the top. It means a young woman can look
Speaker 2: up and say, oh, there's three dozen archetypes of women
Speaker 2: who are politicians. There are three dozen archetypes of women's CEOs.
Speaker 2: I don't want to be like those six, but I
Speaker 2: want to be like one of those. Two. Young men
Speaker 2: can look up and see three dozen archetypes and politics,
Speaker 2: three dozen archetypes as CEO, three dozen archetypes on Wall Street, right,
Speaker 2: and go I don't want to be like those guys,
Speaker 2: but I want to be like those We're just not
Speaker 2: there yet, and so we've got to invest more in
Speaker 2: this if we're going to create true lasting change in
Speaker 2: the country.
Speaker 1: Yeah, no, I can. I mean definitely, speaking from the
Speaker 1: person of color point of view like I never was.
Speaker 1: I was never raised with that system that there were
Speaker 1: any things that were outside of my possibility. My parents
Speaker 1: were very My parents never made us feel that a
Speaker 1: color of skin would hold us back, and so we
Speaker 1: worked hard, we pushed forward. And it was only until
Speaker 1: much much later, probably more recently, where I started to
Speaker 1: realize certain differences. And it was almost as if I
Speaker 1: not that I'd hidden my not that they were hidden
Speaker 1: from me or that I wasn't aware of them. It
Speaker 1: was just I started to recognize how differently. Even sometimes
Speaker 1: I was criticized or looked at versus counterparts who may
Speaker 1: not have that like I. I'd often hear things like,
Speaker 1: you know, well, Jay's using his culture of meditation to
Speaker 1: make it spread across the world, and that's watered down
Speaker 1: and it's not the truth of his tradition or whatever
Speaker 1: it may be. And I was like, wait, wait a minute,
Speaker 1: but this is my tradition, like this, I grew up
Speaker 1: with this. I'm only sharing what's actually from my home
Speaker 1: country and where my parents came from. How fascinating that
Speaker 1: there have been other people who have taken that culture
Speaker 1: and spread it all across the world and never had
Speaker 1: to deal with that feedback, whereas that's feedback that I
Speaker 1: have to deal with, and it sounds very random, a niche,
Speaker 1: but that point being the same, that sometimes you're held
Speaker 1: to a different standard you are.
Speaker 2: There's just even though it is your own totally, and
Speaker 2: they're just it's bias or it's people projecting onto you
Speaker 2: because they haven't seen somebody like you before, and so
Speaker 2: they'll and it'll be I think a lot as a woman,
Speaker 2: I'll say a lot of times it's these sort of
Speaker 2: little indirect ways that things come in. No, you can't, No,
Speaker 2: you shouldn't know. We've never seen one like you before,
Speaker 2: and so I think if we, you know, somewhat. I
Speaker 2: was lucky. I got protected being an all girls' school,
Speaker 2: but it wasn't until I went out to the workforce
Speaker 2: and I hear even men talk about these days. Look,
Speaker 2: I've educated my daughters and sons equally, you know, in schools,
Speaker 2: but then I send them out into the workforce and
Speaker 2: my son sort of sores pretty easily, and my daughter
Speaker 2: just keeps hitting these barriers, right, And so those are
Speaker 2: some of the things we have to look at as
Speaker 2: a society and take down.
Speaker 1: Have you ever had anything from your own kids that
Speaker 1: felt like that where you're like.
Speaker 2: Oh no, less so them specifically, but their friends for sure.
Speaker 2: For sure, particularly they're friends of color. And my sense
Speaker 2: of that was always just to support them until those kids.
Speaker 2: You can be anything you want to be, just because
Speaker 2: that white person tells you, no, uh uh, I see you.
Speaker 2: You've been in my house, I see you. I know
Speaker 2: what you're capable of. Keep going right, or or also
Speaker 2: I think you know, some men are more networked in
Speaker 2: the world. There are more natural networks they connect into.
Speaker 2: So again sending girls out or kids of color and
Speaker 2: connecting them into our networks so they get that first internship.
Speaker 2: So the corporation sees them as like, oh my god,
Speaker 2: they are talented, right, but they don't there aren't those
Speaker 2: natural networks to connect them into today. Or we have
Speaker 2: to push harder to get them in right. And I
Speaker 2: think all of those kinds of things can help.
Speaker 1: What are the top three values that you want to
Speaker 1: do your kids to embody that you felt were real
Speaker 1: priorities for them to operate as humans in the world today.
Speaker 2: I wanted them to be kind, I wanted them to
Speaker 2: develop their talents, whatever that was, because I said to them,
Speaker 2: you have some inherent talent that is up to you
Speaker 2: to figure out that you can give to the world,
Speaker 2: whatever field that is in. And number three, you've been
Speaker 2: lucky to grow up in the United States and to
Speaker 2: grow up in a situation where you didn't have to
Speaker 2: worry about paying for your education or your health career, housing. Like,
Speaker 2: you are lucky, so you have to give back to
Speaker 2: the world. So just as my parents said to me,
Speaker 2: you will be college going, my kids got the messages
Speaker 2: you will give back to the world. Now, I've always
Speaker 2: said to them, have your own career for you know,
Speaker 2: know what you're good at. But at some point you
Speaker 2: are expected to give back. And I've actually been pleasantly
Speaker 2: surprised that all of them, even in their twenties, have
Speaker 2: figured out how to give back in different ways. And again,
Speaker 2: it goes back to that thing that I learned in
Speaker 2: high school, which is we can all one of us
Speaker 2: can affect somebody else's life. Right, if you grow up
Speaker 2: in the United States, you are lucky. Even in a
Speaker 2: tough circumstance. In the United States, you're lucky compared to
Speaker 2: the way people grew up in many other countries.
Speaker 1: How did you guide them through the process of growing
Speaker 1: up with such famous parents and known parents, because I've
Speaker 1: that's a really hard thing, like to grow up where
Speaker 1: everyone knows who your parents are and recognizes your name
Speaker 1: and everyone. How have you helped them navigate that, because
Speaker 1: I can imagine that's not easy at all.
Speaker 2: It was difficult for them, and I knew it was
Speaker 2: going to be difficult when they were young. Well two things.
Speaker 2: One is we didn't have the TV on in the house,
Speaker 2: so they literally didn't know. In fact, their father was
Speaker 2: kind of who he was in the world. He was
Speaker 2: his dad in the house, you know. And I was
Speaker 2: not out speaking in the world that much then, And
Speaker 2: so we enrolled them in their schools under my name,
Speaker 2: my maiden name French, and it would give us two
Speaker 2: to three weeks where I would be dropping them off
Speaker 2: at school and they were just like everybody else. Nobody
Speaker 2: knew their dad was who he was, and it wasn't
Speaker 2: until he showed up that people went, oh, those are
Speaker 2: his kids. But by then they were already in the
Speaker 2: school and they were just we were seen as a
Speaker 2: normal family. That was done intentionally, was super intentionally. And
Speaker 2: I would sit down with the administration before the school
Speaker 2: year and talk about the values we had, and I
Speaker 2: expected them to be treated like everybody else's kids, and
Speaker 2: if my kids were acting out, I wanted to know
Speaker 2: about it, or if they were acting wealthy. I went
Speaker 2: to school, I went to university with other wealthy kids,
Speaker 2: and I wasn't. I saw some of those kids acted.
Speaker 2: Those weren't going to be my kids. So that's how
Speaker 2: they started elementary school, and then as they got to
Speaker 2: middle school. In high school, we would have conversations with
Speaker 2: them about would you like to keep your mom's ma
Speaker 2: name name or would you like to adopt Gates and
Speaker 2: different ones chose different things of the three of them
Speaker 2: at different times. But we just didn't make a big
Speaker 2: deal about what we were out doing in the world,
Speaker 2: you know, their world. They were very protected by their
Speaker 2: schools and by our home life. Yes, they grew up
Speaker 2: in a very fancy house, but you know, they had chores,
Speaker 2: they knew that they were they had an allowance. We
Speaker 2: didn't just buy them something. And when they finally got
Speaker 2: to the age where they had a phone. If they
Speaker 2: broke their phone, there were rules about how that got replaced.
Speaker 2: We just didn't give them a new phone, right So
Speaker 2: they grew up with that and I think it taught
Speaker 2: them the value of money. It taught them that, Okay,
Speaker 2: they could see when when also when I was out
Speaker 2: speaking more they knew why they could see what their
Speaker 2: dad was doing, especially in philanthropy. Then, oh, my parents
Speaker 2: are living out their values in the world. But they
Speaker 2: were very protected by their schools and I think that
Speaker 2: served them incredibly well.
Speaker 1: How old were they when they got their first phone?
Speaker 2: Ah, so my oldest daughter, the conversation was about a
Speaker 2: flip phone, and that was in fifth grade and she
Speaker 2: finally got it in sixth Oh.
Speaker 1: Good.
Speaker 2: And the difference between when she went through high school
Speaker 2: then versus my youngest, which was six years later through
Speaker 2: the same high school. Two girls, the son in the middle,
Speaker 2: but the two girls, the difference between not having social
Speaker 2: media and high school and my oldest went through and
Speaker 2: then my youngest having social media by middle school just
Speaker 2: profoundly different in terms of parenting. It was just it
Speaker 2: was like a switch went on. And even the adults
Speaker 2: in the school having a phone, it was just so different.
Speaker 2: But we did have rules early on. Ever, you know,
Speaker 2: they plugged their phones outside their room at night where
Speaker 2: I could see them, and when I'd wake up at
Speaker 2: night and go, look, that phone better be in the
Speaker 2: place that it was supposed to be. Now, whether they
Speaker 2: snuck it back to the room for a few minutes
Speaker 2: and brought it back, I've now learned a couple of them.
Speaker 2: But you know, we had rules about those things, and
Speaker 2: I think that served them well.
Speaker 1: How do we create a culture of giving in service, Milinda,
Speaker 1: Because I think some people would look and say, oh,
Speaker 1: it's easy to do it when you have billions to
Speaker 1: give away, or you know, millions to give away, or
Speaker 1: whatever else it may be. And I remember in my
Speaker 1: spiritual tradition, one statement that I always used to love
Speaker 1: is God doesn't see how much you give, God sees
Speaker 1: how much you hold back. And it was this idea
Speaker 1: of you know, and I've always appreciated that sentiment because
Speaker 1: and I found so I had parents who were very giving,
Speaker 1: even though our household income for me growing up was
Speaker 1: no more than like fifty zero pounds, and my parents
Speaker 1: were still very charitable in the way they could be.
Speaker 1: And it's said a really good turn for me. And
Speaker 1: then when I lived as a monk, we did a
Speaker 1: lot of service work and that has continued in my
Speaker 1: life afterwards as well. And that continues to be an
Speaker 1: important part of my wife and nice life of wanting
Speaker 1: to give back, wanting to serve. But it's I think
Speaker 1: it's it's hard because we're so many people are struggling financially.
Speaker 1: So many people are struggling economically. There are far less
Speaker 1: opportunities that people have to even take care of themselves.
Speaker 1: The prices of rents, you know, soaring through the roof,
Speaker 1: like healthcare in this country, of course, is you know,
Speaker 1: the biggest concern. And so I think what you were
Speaker 1: saying earlier is that people who have opportunities and have
Speaker 1: the privilege to give, should give. But I think often
Speaker 1: we can sit in the think of, well, when I
Speaker 1: have a million or a billion or whatever, maybe then
Speaker 1: i'll give. How do we shift that, like, what does
Speaker 1: that look like?
Speaker 2: I think you can there are different ways to give.
Speaker 2: You can give your time, your energy, or your money,
Speaker 2: or any combination of those. So I think there's value
Speaker 2: in high school kids and even middle schools going out
Speaker 2: and volunteering. You know, my two of my three children
Speaker 2: worked on the Teen Crisis text line, and boy, I
Speaker 2: mean they really had to learn how to counsel, what
Speaker 2: to do. They had to show up but they learned
Speaker 2: a lot about you know, other teens in crisis. They
Speaker 2: benefited from it too. I had one of my kids
Speaker 2: worked out in the community in a homeless shelter, right
Speaker 2: and was helping with the food services. So there are
Speaker 2: so many ways to help in our own backyard. And
Speaker 2: I always tell people start there because you'll get attached
Speaker 2: to something and you'll start to see that your time
Speaker 2: absolutely can make a difference in somebody's life, right, And
Speaker 2: even if you can't give much money, or at the
Speaker 2: end of the year you can give fifty or one
Speaker 2: hundred dollars to that organization, it does help. And so
Speaker 2: I just encourage people to start somewhere, even if it
Speaker 2: feels really small to them. When they start, you learn
Speaker 2: something from all those experiences.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I definitely found that. I think service is
Speaker 1: one of those things that and I you know, there's
Speaker 1: it can be seen as the most selfless or the
Speaker 1: most selfish thing because it gives you. It's the best
Speaker 1: learning experience of learning about the challenges that exist, learning
Speaker 1: that when you're part of solving a problem, you feel
Speaker 1: the solution is closer, right, I think like you feel
Speaker 1: like there is a light at the end of the tunnel.
Speaker 1: There is a method, for sure. And you know, service
Speaker 1: has given me so many gifts in my life, and
Speaker 1: therefore I will never say it's been selfless because I've
Speaker 1: gained so much from it. But the biggest thing it's
Speaker 1: helped me understand is just that. Yeah, when you feel
Speaker 1: you're part of solving a problem, it feels manageable, it
Speaker 1: feels possible, and seeing one person's life change is miraculous.
Speaker 1: And I think if we see it as statistics or
Speaker 1: dollars or numbers, then it will never feel like enough,
Speaker 1: because numbers will never satisfy or make us feel like
Speaker 1: we want because we know there's more. But witnessing change
Speaker 1: through the eyes of one individual, I mean nothing can
Speaker 1: compare to that. And you'd have no idea how many
Speaker 1: lives you've changed just through that impact and the great
Speaker 1: opportunity you gain to even have something to give. It's
Speaker 1: a privilege to you. It's such a someone's giving you
Speaker 1: the opportunity to serve They've served you by giving you
Speaker 1: the opportunity. I think we often feel like we're helping others,
Speaker 1: but I've found so often that I'm fortunate enough that
Speaker 1: I'm even in that position that I can give that
Speaker 1: to someone.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and you learn from those people too, You learn culturally,
Speaker 2: you learn things that you wouldn't have known even about yourself. Right.
Speaker 2: There's a quote I love that I used in actually
Speaker 2: my high school graduation speech. It was by Ralph Waldo Emerson,
Speaker 2: and it ends by saying, to know that even one
Speaker 2: life has breathed easier because you have lived, that is
Speaker 2: to have succeeded.
Speaker 1: And so well.
Speaker 2: Even for me, even though I was goal or in it,
Speaker 2: I wanted to do this and I wanted to do that.
Speaker 2: My definition of success was if somebody's breathed easier on
Speaker 2: this planet because I've lived, then my life was worth it. Right.
Speaker 2: And you know, if you talk to anybody who does
Speaker 2: hospice at end of life, or if you've gotten to
Speaker 2: walk the end of life journey, which I've been fortunate
Speaker 2: enough to do with two people in very close, you
Speaker 2: realize that, you know, people want to know at the
Speaker 2: end of their life that they were loved by their
Speaker 2: family and friends, and that they loved their family and
Speaker 2: friends in return, and that their life had some meaning,
Speaker 2: whatever that meaning is for them. And so you know,
Speaker 2: I often think in the US we have our definition
Speaker 2: of success wrong. You know, we look at these people
Speaker 2: who've made it an industry or made x amount of money,
Speaker 2: but no success is like think of that teacher who
Speaker 2: if we all talk about like, who had the most
Speaker 2: impact in our lives. Quite often people will talk about
Speaker 2: their parents or a teacher or a coach, and so
Speaker 2: think about it. A coach in a school doesn't make
Speaker 2: much money, but he or she has an enormous impact
Speaker 2: on the students that come through that high school absolutely
Speaker 2: and play that sport. And so to me, there's enormous
Speaker 2: value in that, and those are the kinds of things
Speaker 2: we should be holding up in society.
Speaker 1: I've had this dream, and maybe we'll speak about it
Speaker 1: another time, but I've had this dream for a long
Speaker 1: time in regards to that, because I grew up in
Speaker 1: a home where I remember, you know, where my extended
Speaker 1: family or family members would always want to wait for
Speaker 1: the Times Rich List like that was published every year,
Speaker 1: and obviously then it was the Forbes Rich List became
Speaker 1: the new thing, and then now we have the Time
Speaker 1: one hundred list or whatever. Maybe, and I always dreamed
Speaker 1: and I've still had this stream that I want to
Speaker 1: do it one days. I want to create a service list.
Speaker 1: And I'd love a service list to be published every
Speaker 1: year of individuals and groups of people who are doing
Speaker 1: the most service. And not only would I like it
Speaker 1: to be a list of the people who give the
Speaker 1: most money, I'd like them to nominate someone who works
Speaker 1: on the ground to be nominated to be on that list.
Speaker 1: Totally because of the unknown names that you're not famous people.
Speaker 1: Basically you're doing amazing work around the world that I'm
Speaker 1: sure you know many of. And I've always had this
Speaker 1: dream that we could publish a service list every year,
Speaker 1: because I feel like if I grew up in a
Speaker 1: home where there's a service list on my table every year,
Speaker 1: I feel what we reward in society is what we repeat.
Speaker 1: And I don't see service being rewarded or seen as
Speaker 1: an achievement yet, or it's seen as the achievement of
Speaker 1: a few, And until it becomes something that is accessible
Speaker 1: and open to many, we'll keep looking at the rich
Speaker 1: list and being blown away by that and thinking that's
Speaker 1: the goal of life. It's hard to change that. If
Speaker 1: the only list that every major publication is publishing is
Speaker 1: the wealth list, how will we ever shift what achievement
Speaker 1: is in the society.
Speaker 2: So anyway, that is a really good idea because and again,
Speaker 2: the people doing the real work are the people who
Speaker 2: are giving of themselves and in service. And as you said,
Speaker 2: you see change, even change at a grassroots level. We
Speaker 2: all get so overwhelmed by these global problems, and they
Speaker 2: are overwhelming, but again the only thing that's ever changed
Speaker 2: the world are groups of individuals coming together. We seem
Speaker 2: to forget that, you know. So, yeah, a service list
Speaker 2: would be okay, I know about one hundred people I
Speaker 2: could put on that one.
Speaker 1: Amazing. Let's find a way of figuring it out. Melinda,
Speaker 1: it has been such a joy talking to you today.
Speaker 1: You've been so kind and gracious with your time. We
Speaker 1: end every On Purpose episode with a fast five, a
Speaker 1: final five, which have to be answered in one word
Speaker 1: to one sentence maximum. Okay, So, Melinda Frenchgates, these are
Speaker 1: your final five. The first question is what is the
Speaker 1: best advice you've ever heard or received?
Speaker 2: Be yourself?
Speaker 1: Second question, what is the worst advice you've ever heard
Speaker 1: or received?
Speaker 2: Act like this other person?
Speaker 1: Third question, what is a lesson you learned the hard way?
Speaker 2: I learned to be a better parent when I stopped
Speaker 2: and would really listen to my kids instead of being dictatorial.
Speaker 2: When I would stop and listen, I was so much
Speaker 2: better parent.
Speaker 1: Question number four, what is a message you want to
Speaker 1: leave behind?
Speaker 2: That there is so much potential in everybody and we
Speaker 2: need to unlock that potential, break down the barriers and
Speaker 2: the biases there so we just can unlock all that
Speaker 2: amazing potential.
Speaker 1: And fifth and final question which we asked every guest
Speaker 1: who's ever been on the show, if you could create
Speaker 1: one law that everyone in the world had to follow,
Speaker 1: what would it be?
Speaker 2: Did it for every place in life where you see
Speaker 2: a man in a position of power, that he would
Speaker 2: be accompanied by a woman or a person of color.
Speaker 1: Beautiful and Linda French Gates, thank you so much for
Speaker 1: being with us here and on purpose today. I think
Speaker 1: everyone's and listening and watching wherever you are in the world.
Speaker 1: Please share with me and Melinda your greatest takeaways, the
Speaker 1: insights that stuck with you, the messages that you'll be
Speaker 1: passing on and sharing with your family and your friends.
Speaker 1: There were so many great insights today. I hope you
Speaker 1: find your spiritual community. I hope you find your counsel
Speaker 1: of wise advisors. I hope that you recognize that imposter
Speaker 1: syndrome can be beautiful and can be powerful, and that
Speaker 1: perfectionism is something that we can learn to embrace in
Speaker 1: order to recognize that our imperfections is what makes us human,
Speaker 1: it's what makes us real, it's what makes us feel
Speaker 1: like we can connect with others. Thank you so much
Speaker 1: to all of you, and a big thank to Melinda
Speaker 1: for being here today again, and thank you so much. Honestly,
Speaker 1: this is a wonderful conversation.
Speaker 2: Thanks for having me. This is great. I really enjoyed it.
Speaker 1: Thank you, Melinda. If you enjoyed this podcast, you're going
Speaker 1: to love my conversation with Michelle Obama where she opens
Speaker 1: up on how to stay with your partner when they're
Speaker 1: changing and the four check ins you should be doing
Speaker 1: in your relationship. We also talk about how to deal
Speaker 1: with relationships when they're undistressed. If you're going through something
Speaker 1: right now with your partner or someone you're seeing, this
Speaker 1: is the episode for you.
Speaker 3: No wonder our kids are struggling. We have a new
Speaker 3: technology and we've just taken it in hookline and Sinker,
Speaker 3: and we have to be mindful.
Speaker 2: For our kids. They'll just be.
Speaker 3: Thumbing through this stuff. You know their mind's never sleeping.