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No Longer in Shadow of her famous husband (Bill Gates), Melinda Gates Puts Her Mark on Foundation

Warren E. Buffett said he was making a bet "on a couple of outstanding minds" when he recently donated $31 billion to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. And as he did so, one of those minds emerged from the shadow of her husband to become a full-fledged partner in the world's largest foundation.

Melinda Gates is far more than a name on the door. In televised appearances announcing the donation, Ms. Gates held her own as self-confident, articulate and knowledgeable. Her detailed grasp of the foundation's education and health programs extended from enumerating the percentage improvements in graduation rates at experimental high schools in New York City to describing clinical trials on a drug to combat visceral leishmaniasis, a deadly tropical disease.

Ms. Gates, former executives at the philanthropy said, has played an instrumental role in the foundation's evolution from a modest organization less than a decade ago, known mainly for its program to put Internet-connected personal computers in the nation's libraries, into the giant of the foundation world, with ambitious designs to reform education in the United States and eradicate the world's killer diseases.

Her husband, given his wealth and fame, will always be mentioned first, but Ms. Gates's influence at the foundation is comparable.

"He has the higher profile, but in terms of her engagement, it's been as much as his and, over the last year or two, perhaps even more than his," said Dr. Helene D. Gayle, who left the foundation earlier this year to become president of CARE, the international relief agency. "They see this as a partnership, and she's clearly a strong and equal partner."

The 41-year-old Ms. Gates ? who earned an M.B.A. degree from Duke University, and then spent nine years rising in the managerial ranks at Microsoft ? guards her privacy and rations her appearances. She rarely gives interviews and declined to be interviewed for this article. The foundation also declined to make members of the staff available for an article that would deal with her role.

Her reticence is not only a matter of personal preference but also priorities, said friends, most who asked not to be quoted. Ms. Gates, they say, wants to ensure that she has ample time for her children ? two girls and a boy ages 10 to 3 ? so they have as normal an upbringing as possible.

Yet from interviews with friends and former colleagues at Microsoft, previous interviews with foundation officials and an interview two years ago with Ms. Gates, a few things are known about her role at the foundation and how she interacts with her husband there.

By all accounts, she is instinctively more at ease than her husband at some stops on their foundation tours abroad, like holding and hugging babies with AIDS in Africa or talking with male sex workers in India in an H.I.V.-prevention program.

In conversation and in her occasional speeches, Ms. Gates is much more likely than her husband to recount personal experiences. To point to the powerful role that teachers can make in a child's education, she cites Sister Judith Marie, who recognized her math talents as a seventh grader, and then her high school math teacher, Susan Bauer at the Ursuline Academy in Dallas, who made sure that the academy had computers in 1980, Apple II's.

"She set me on my way," Ms. Gates said in a speech last fall.

In explaining the Gateses' growing commitment to philanthropy, Ms. Gates often points to the encouragement of Mr. Gates's mother, Mary, who died of cancer shortly after the couple were married in 1994. Before the wedding, Mary Gates gave Melinda a letter about marriage that ended, "From those to whom much is given, much is expected."

But to portray Mr. Gates as the analytic strategist and Ms. Gates as the humanizing influence, the nurturing woman, would be a stereotypical distortion of their partnership, former foundation officials said.

Ms. Gates, the M.B.A., speaks of the foundation and its approach to philanthropy as a no-nonsense, results-oriented venture. Her favorite term of approval is "strategic," and smart philanthropy pursues "strategic intervention points," she says.

And "charity," it seems, is not the business of the foundation. In a speech earlier this year, Ms. Gates characterized the strategic pitfall of philanthropy as succumbing to the temptation to "apply a thin layer of resources over a broad range of problems ? and do a lot of charity, but not effect much change."

Instead, the strategy of the foundation starts from "the belief that every human being has equal worth," she said. To attack the problem, she added, the foundation focuses on health as the greatest inequity in the developing world, and education as the source of the most destructive inequity in the United States.

The day-to-day operations of the foundation are run by its president, Patty Stonesifer, a former senior executive at Microsoft. But Mr. and Ms. Gates both must approve all grants of more than $10 million. Proposals are typically presented to both in person, and approval or rejection decisions come by e-mail after the two have talked privately.

Dr. Richard Klausner, who ran the foundation's health programs until last year, when he left to start a consulting company, said Ms. Gates was as informed on the technical details of the grant proposals as Mr. Gates. In meetings, Dr. Klausner said, "Bill tends to be a bit more talkative, but what was very clear is that decisions were made together."

The decisions, Ms. Gates says, are often discussed and debated during long walks along the shores of Lake Washington, near their home.

At the foundation, Ms. Gates seems to fill the role of a partner, whose intellect and judgment Mr. Gates respects, as he has sought in business. Mr. Gates first partnered with Paul G. Allen, his childhood friend and co-founder of Microsoft, and later with Steven A. Ballmer, the company's current chief executive.

William Randolph Hearst III, a venture capitalist and philanthropist who knows the couple, said Mr. Gates enjoyed the give-and-take with intellectual peers to test ideas, debate, even lose arguments if it meant seeing things in a new light. "And Melinda is very smart," he said.

The influence of Ms. Gates is seen in the foundation's support for certain women's issues, outside experts said. They point to its support for the development of microbicides ? colorless, odorless gels now being tested that women could apply to protect themselves from H.I.V. and other sexually transmitted diseases without their husband's or partner's knowledge. In May, Ms. Gates wrote a commentary article in Newsweek emphasizing the importance of microbicides in Africa.

The International Partnership for Microbicides, a nonprofit research organization, has received $60 million from the foundation.

"My sense is that Melinda has intuitively understood women's vulnerability to H.I.V. and had the sense that women didn't have the tools they needed to protect themselves," said Pam Norick, chief of external relations for the microbicides group.

Ms. Gates is Roman Catholic, and the foundation does not finance abortion programs. It generally does not underwrite any direct medical services, but has issued grants totaling $522 million for family planning and maternal health programs.

She has suggested that theirs is a partnership of cooperation on both sides. In a speech last year, Ms. Gates, the Dallas native, observed: "I have firsthand knowledge of how tough and resourceful Texas women can be. So does my husband."