When Melinda French Gates turns 42 today, it's a safe bet she and her husband, Bill, won't be marking the occasion with a night out on the town.
When it comes to her public profile as the wife of the world's richest man, Ms. Gates has been famously private since their love first blossomed at a Microsoft company picnic in 1988.
She remains so even now, as she travels around the world injecting dollars and hope into efforts to tame humanity's worst health crises.
While her remarks at the 16th International AIDS Conference in Toronto certainly attracted attention, Ms. Gates eschewed media interviews.
She preferred to keep the spotlight trained on a group far less visible to celebrity-obsessed Western eyes: those suffering HIV-AIDS in Africa.
To the relative few who know Ms. Gates, this is typical of a woman who has always placed the pursuit of positive results, whether in business or philanthropy, ahead of public persona.
“When I think about places that she has travelled to and I talk to people who have met her, they all are impressed at how engaged she is, and how engaging she is,” Helene Gayle, president of the international aid agency CARE USA, said during a break yesterday at the Toronto conference, where Ms. Gates made a presentation for the second day in a row. “She exudes a sense of warmth and caring, but also a real shrewd knowledge of the areas in which the foundation works.”
Dr. Gayle was referring to the $62-billion Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, co-chaired by the couple and endowed with the fortune Mr. Gates amassed as founder of Microsoft. Until she left the foundation four months ago to lead CARE, Dr. Gayle oversaw its programs for HIV, tuberculosis and reproductive health.
As such, she came to know that Ms. Gates — who has, in the past, asked friends and relatives not to answer questions about her — is nonetheless generous and intensely interested when it comes to the lives she is trying to save.
“I was talking to somebody, the director of the AIDS program in Rwanda whom she'd just visited, and she said, ‘I've never seen somebody at that level come and ask me detailed questions about people's CD4 counts,'” said Dr. Gayle, referring to the immune-system cells within the body that are typically hijacked by HIV.
Ms. Gates's diligence flows from the foundation's philosophy that “all life has equal value,” Dr. Gayle said. “She's an incredibly passionate and committed person.”
Raised in Dallas, Ms. Gates attended high school at the private, Roman Catholic, all-girls Ursuline Academy, which stressed public service. Her remarks at the opening of the conference suggested she is willing to place that priority ahead of Catholic doctrine, which frowns on the use of condoms for birth control, though she didn't name the Church specifically.
“In the fight against AIDS, condoms save lives,” she said. “If you oppose the distribution of condoms, something is more important to you than saving lives.”
It was an outspoken remark for a woman better known for being mostly unknown to followers of the celebrity press, a group from which she and Mr. Gates, 50, have managed to keep relatively distant during their courtship, wedding and family life with their three children near Seattle.
Computers, of course, brought them together, and in Ms. Gates's case, her interest was sparked by a high-school teacher.
She went on to study computer science and economics at Duke University in Durham, N.C. She followed that with an MBA from Duke's Fuqua School of Business, earning two degrees in just five years.
