Chances are that many who rushed out to buy Melinda French Gates’ new book, The Next Day: Transitions, Change and Moving Forward expected to learn gossipy details about her divorce from Bill Gates. If so, they came away disappointed.
The book is not a tell-all. Instead it is the story of how Melinda French Gates navigated the big transitions in her life. Among them: getting a computer science degree at Duke, working as the only woman in her Microsoft hiring class, becoming a mother, dealing with death, splitting with Bill and leaving the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation they co-chaired.
Melinda – as French Gates is best known in Seattle — writes with a confiding voice like a close friend letting you in on secrets. Reading her book, it’s possible to forget you are hearing about inner thoughts from a global philanthropist. When she wants to talk about difficult choices, Melinda now turns to a rarified group: broadcast icons Oprah Winfrey and Gayle King, actress and producer Reese Witherspoon, filmmaker Ava DuVernay, First Lady Michelle Obama, soccer champ Megan Rapinoe and tennis legend Billie Jean King.
Melinda’s memoir takes the reader on an incredible journey starting with her youth growing in a devout Catholic family in Dallas, Tex. She profited from the strong support of her aerospace engineer dad and homemaker mom. It was her mother who told her: “Set your own agenda or else someone will set it for you.”
In her early years, Melinda sometimes sought help. She kept a three-inch thick journal. She listened to advice from friends, from self-improvement books and even from inspirational poetry. When she faced the death of her good friend John Neilson, she adopted Mark Nepo’s poem advising friends “to be a greenhouse for each other.”
The split with Bill, her husband of 27 years, was included in the book only because Melinda felt she had to address such a public transition. Prior to her decision to leave Bill, she tells of having the same nightmare for weeks, suffering panic attacks. Finally she decided to listen to the inner voice telling her “this isn’t right anymore.” She mentions a New York Times article that raised questions over Bill’s conduct, suggesting he had betrayed their marriage. If there was more to the breakup, Melinda doesn’t explain, apparently not willing to say anything that would hurt their family.
Instead she digresses touching on happier moments. She remembers their wedding when Bill didn’t know what he was supposed to do about cutting the cake. She recalls, “Here is this charming, well-meaning, mind-boggling brilliant nerd, all dressed up in his tux, just trying to have a good time at the party.”
Recently Melinda has been on a multicity book tour, concluding with her appearance with Reese Witherspoon at the Paramount Theater. The April 24 event was a sell-out, attracting more than 2,800, some thousand more than attended Bill Gates’ book event in February.
Still Melinda’s book has not been treated kindly by all reviewers. Suzy Weiss of The Free Press wallowed in snark, tagging the book “a curiously petty memoir.” The 30-year-old former New York Post reporter writes that “vaguely profound is the best the book gets.”
For my part, I’d be surprised if Suzy’s callow opinion affects book sales, which, by the way, will benefit cancer research and computer science education. I found The Next Day inspiring in its honesty and in Melinda’s determination to move forward.
She writes that when she and Bill first decided to give away the majority of their wealth, they wrote a public letter laying out their priorities – “making sure lifesaving vaccines reach every person who needs them and working to expand access to education and health care because every child deserves the chance to grow up to dream and do big things.”
After the divorce and her decision to leave the Gates Foundation, Melinda wrote another letter committing her time, energy and efforts to work to fight poverty and to advance equality for women and girls and other marginalized groups in the United States and around the world.
It wasn’t just her relationship to Bill that had changed. The world, too, had been changing. After the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, to name one troubling example, Melinda realized that it was time to move forward on the next chapter of her philanthropy. Finding herself unable to accept the idea that her granddaughters could grow up with less freedom she had, she vowed to devote more time and resources to the effort and to Pivotal Ventures, the nimble organization she founded in 2015.
She observed that, “It’s much easier to imagine that you have all the answers when you’re sitting in a conference room in Seattle than when you’re face-to-face with a business owner in Nairobi or an indigenous activist in New Mexico. That’s why I think philanthropy is most effective when it prioritizes flexibility over ideology and why I continue to seek out new partners, ideas and perspectives.”
The journey has come full circle. Along with her book’s title, Melinda French Gates has moved through some difficult transitions and, having reached 60, is emerging, more comfortable in her own skin. For my part, I found The Next Day a book worth reading. It’s more: an inspiration, delivered by a woman working to make lives better.
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