Latest news with #MarkSuzman
Forbes
4 days ago
- Business
- Forbes
How To Navigate The Future And Not Get Lost
By cultivating your navigational skills you'll be able to prepare for what's next while others are ... More still reacting to what just happened. When the Trump administration abruptly withdrew from the World Health Organization in January, the Gates Foundation was thrown into turmoil. Years of investment in global health infrastructure—vaccines and medicines developed in Gates-funded labs—were suddenly jeopardized. 'We tried to anticipate what the new government might bring,' Gates Foundation director Mark Suzman told The New York Times. 'But we did not foresee the scale of the change.' They're not alone. From boardrooms to bedrooms, individuals and institutions alike are struggling to stay upright in what can only be described as a sea of unrelenting change. As a futurist, I observe that we are living through a rare historical inflection point. The old order is dissolving. New rules are being written. Established ways of operating—many of them holdovers from the Industrial and Information Ages—are quickly becoming obsolete. AI and automation are reshaping work. Climate disruptions are transforming industries and business models, such as insurance, upside down. Institutions are groaning under the stress of unrelenting pressure to adapt. Welcome to the Age of Acceleration. To survive—and yes, to thrive in—the emerging future, we must develop new mindsets. We need new tools for navigating what I call the MegaForces of Change. These are not fads or short-term trends. They are seismic, global-scale shifts that have the potential to reshape our lives, careers, and communities – and indeed, the planet itself. Just consider what we're likely to witness over the next decade: The coming decade will confront us with unprecedented challenges—and open the door to equally unprecedented opportunities. We'll face existential threats to our health, security, and planetary future. And yet, at the same time, we will unlock scientific, technological, and social breakthroughs with the potential to solve our most urgent problems. But we won't get there by clinging to yesterday's mindsets. To flourish in this new landscape, we must develop future preparedness—the capacity to see change coming, make sense of it, and act before we're forced to. This isn't just about forecasting. It's about cultivating what I call an Anticipatory Mindset: the ability to scan the horizon, decode signals amidst the noise, and prepare for what's next while others are still reacting to what just happened. It's time to embrace the mindsets that will allow us to navigate the turbulence but also ride the waves, and not be capsized by them. The future isn't something that happens to us. It's something we help create.
Arab News
09-05-2025
- Health
- Arab News
Gates Foundation ‘appreciates' Saudi Arabia's leadership amid global aid funding cuts
LONDON: Saudi Arabia is playing a 'growing global leadership role' as the US and European countries drastically cut foreign aid and development funding, the Gates Foundation CEO told Arab News on Thursday. Speaking as his organization announced a new strategy to give away $200 billion over the next 20 years, Mark Suzman said a planned regional office in Riyadh would help the foundation achieve its long-term goals. He said the foundation, which is chaired by the Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, would continue pursuing the eradication of polio, a campaign that Saudi Arabia has pledged hundreds of million of dollars toward. The Gates Foundation 'deeply appreciated' the leadership shown by the Kingdom 'as some of the traditional donors are pulling back,' Suzman said. The foundation's new timeline was decided long before the Trump administration radically cut foreign aid spending in January, followed by the UK, France and other European countries. In light of those cuts, the foundation is 'very strongly making the case, whether it's in Washington, D.C., or London, or Paris, or Berlin, that with the resources that are still focused on development, it is imperative that they get applied to the highest impact opportunities,' Suzman said. Those opportunities include the Gavi Vaccine Alliance and the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria — two programs that are estimated to have saved at least 80 million lives in the last 25 years. Suzman said both programs needed replenishing in the coming months and that he hoped even with the fiscal challenges those governments are facing they would still provide funding. 'At the same time, though, we are really appreciative of the way in which not just Saudi Arabia but other countries in the Gulf have been leaning in and showing a much bigger global leadership role,' he added. Another key area the foundation will continue to focus on is polio vaccination campaigns. Last year Saudi Arabia pledged $500 million to the Global Polio Eradication Initiative, which is heavily supported by Gates. Suzman said he hopes that within three to five years, polio, which is now only endemic in Afghanistan and Pakistan, will become the second disease after smallpox to be eradicated. 'For us, it's full steam ahead, and we actually hope that will then free up resources, not just from us, but from growing development partners like the Kingdom or like others in the Gulf, such as the UAE and Qatar.' He said those resources could then be reallocated to other areas of global health and development, including agricultural and financial inclusion. During the announcement of the polio campaign funding in April last year, the foundation also said it would open a new Middle East office in Riyadh at the Mohammed Bin Salman Nonprofit City. Suzman said the decision to open a Saudi office was due to the polio partnership but also other areas of cooperation with the Kingdom. The office, which is expected to open early next year, would be part of a growing global network that builds partnerships intended to focus on 'long-term health and development goals,' he said. The foundation also partners with Saudi Arabia on the Lives and Livelihoods Fund, which aims to reduce poverty in Islamic countries. In November, Gates and the Mohammed Bin Salman Foundation, known as Misk, announced the Challenge for Change program to support nonprofits and social enterprises in the Kingdom. A Gates Foundation announcement on Thursday said Bill Gates would dramatically speed up the disbursement of almost all of his fortune. The organization aims to distribute $200 billion by 2045 in what it described as the largest philanthropic commitment in modern history. The foundation would then come to an end. 'People will say a lot of things about me when I die, but I am determined that 'he died rich' will not be one of them,' Gates said as he marked the foundation's 25th anniversary. He also warned that decades of progress in reducing death rates from disease and poverty would be reversed due to the cuts in aid funding by governments in the US and Europe. 'It's going to be millions more deaths because of the resources,' Gates told Reuters.
Hindustan Times
09-05-2025
- Business
- Hindustan Times
Gates Foundation to be remain ‘engaged deeply' in India: CEO Mark Suzman to HT
Microsoft founder Bill Gates on Thursday pledged to donate almost all his wealth over the next two decades, including around $200 billion, through his foundation, the Bill Gates Foundation, which he plans to close by December 31, 2045. That commitment to the foundation is around twice what he ploughed into it in its first 25 years of existence. The foundation has been very active in India and in the context of the announcement, Gates Foundation CEO Mark Suzman spoke to HT's editor-in-chief R Sukumar. Edited excerpts: Apart from the fact that this is 25 years of the Gates Foundation, you were also an early entrant into India. India was probably the first overseas operation for the Gates Foundation, 2003. And back then, the Indian philanthropy sector was pretty much in its infancy. Sure, there were always people who were giving, but I don't think it was formalised. I don't think people were looking at the outcomes. Can you tell us a bit about how you see the space having changed in this period, and also the role that the Gates Foundation has played as a catalyst in facilitating this change? Yes. India was the first country where we established an office outside the United States in the early 2000s, initially working on HIV/AIDS, and then broadening into the full range of work we do across health and agricultural development, financial inclusion, sanitation, a wide range of priorities, all very aligned with the government's priorities. And also, India was one of the earliest places where Bill and Melinda started focusing very much on, how can we help support and build a stronger domestic philanthropic sector? And you're right, there were long traditions of philanthropy that the Tatas, in particular, have long established history of philanthropic leadership in India. But I think what the Gates Foundation and Bill and Melinda, personally, were able to help provide was catalysing more of a dialogue among many of the wealthy in India about their wider philanthropic opportunities and ways in which they could work together. And that's certainly been one of the signature things that we've observed in India over the last 20 years now, is a significant expansion in the philanthropic sector, and an energy and attention and great leadership, a number of people joining the Giving Pledge, including Nandan Nilekani, Azim Premji, others who have become truly global leaders and global examples of how to do effective and smart philanthropy. And that's something we're continuing to build on. We're working on a couple of exciting new partnerships, which we hope to be able to announce in the near future that are philanthropic partnerships. And we've developed strong partnerships with other groups, like the Piramal Foundation. We work extensively in Bihar, specifically, but also a range of other districts where we've been working with – directed by NITI Aayog, many of the poorer and most destitute districts in the tribal areas and elsewhere. And so, India has been a great example and a model of how philanthropy can work closely with government and generate and support the private sector and deliver outcomes. And in fact, India overall has been an amazing model over the past 25 years of how it can successfully look at the needs of its citizens in areas like health and agricultural development. It's an amazing story. What are the really big successes that you think you've managed to achieve in this period, two or three things that really stand out? Well, first, I just want to emphasize that we don't do anything on our own as the Gates Foundation. All our successes – are very much done in partnership with the government, with other philanthropists, with private sector partners. But in a number of areas, India's successes that we've helped contribute to include your massive scale up and improvement in Indian vaccination and the reduction in child mortality across India. We helped work and develop new vaccines, like the rotavirus vaccine that was developed with Indian expertise and Indian knowledge. And that's a vaccine which is also now being used globally by the GAVI vaccine alliance that helps bring down childhood deaths from diarrhoea. We helped expand access to a range of other vaccines as well. We worked with Prime Minister Modi when he made a signature commitment around the Swachh Bharat program. I think the sanitation work that we've done together – we awarded the Prime Minister a Goalkeepers Award several years ago at the United Nations – has been an area where India has really shown massive global leadership, and we've been proud to contribute to. More recently, there's been some really good work being done in agricultural development. There's the work we've been doing with the government of Odisha, now the government of Bihar about developing, pioneering new AI-enabled apps that are helping small holder farmer development, helping them get access to prices, to understand what services they can get from the government, to figure out, get real-time analysis, satellite data on weather forecasts, their soil, what they can be used for fertilizer. Those are pioneering activities that India is now leading the world on. And the other area, big area has been the whole expansion of digital public infrastructure and inclusive financial services, where India, with the universal ID system, that's now become a global model. Again, we've helped provide some technical support, but the real leadership's come from India, first from Nandan Nilekani and then with the government. Those are a number of the areas that I think we're very proud of having helped contribute to, and we can see the results in the massive improvements that India has had, in more than halving preventable child mortality over that period, and significant reductions of maternal mortality and huge reductions in extreme poverty. At the time we started the Foundation, India and South Asia actually had the largest number of extreme poor in the world, and that is no longer the case. And so, it's been a remarkable quarter century in Indian development, and it's part of what's made us excited about what's possible, and it's helped inspire both our work elsewhere in the world, elsewhere in Asia and in Africa. And as we think about the next 20 years with the announcement we're making, the model of India is very much one we have in mind that we hope some of those successes can be replicated elsewhere. When you speak about these successes, and I guess what you were referring to is the fact that if something works well here, you could take the model elsewhere in the world, and see whether it works there, what are some of the things that have worked in India which you've managed to take out and use in other parts of the world? Initially, we were very focused on what we could do within India, and now that shift in the last five to 10 years has really been shifting into where are some of those lessons? Some of them have happened just…well, I would say naturally, because we've helped engage, but that India has already provided global public goods, and that is in the area of vaccine manufacturing. We did a lot of the original partnerships, both through ourselves, through the GAVI Vaccine Alliance, which we helped form, and our major funders of, with the original contracts with companies like Serum Institute and Bharat Biotech and others in the sector, who are now the largest global vaccine manufacturers and the largest supplier of vaccines all across the world. India has shown it can be a global leader in a space, and we fully expect that to continue. A lot of what we were looking at in our recent trip was in areas like diagnostics now. Low-cost diagnostics for diseases like tuberculosis, or new tools that are actually able to monitor pregnant mothers. We have a fetal monitoring system that's quite robust, but technically accurate and informed by AI that's being piloted in India. And the key thing with the Indian innovations, and one of the reasons why they are so rapid, is they're actually – the phrase we like to use is frugal innovation. India is a place where we've been able to drive down the cost and make these cost effective, because there are lots of interventions we know are successful on their own, but are just far too expensive to be scaled up across low and middle income countries. But the Indian models are really about how you do this in a high quality, but very cost effective way, that that's where they led the way in vaccines. And then, above all, the most important area where India is truly a global leader, is around the digital public infrastructure agenda. We've already worked and we helped cofound the institute called MOSIP, which I also visited when I was in Bangalore. MOSIP now helps provide, I think it's over 20 countries with their own digital identity systems building on the Aadhaar system, or the model of the Aadhaar system. And now there's other partnerships, like the Co-Develop partnership that we're also partnering with Nandan Nilekani on, that are helping with a wide range of additional tools. And this was a priority of the Indian G20 where we help provide some support to the government on shaping that agenda, and that's been taken up through subsequent G20s, both the Brazilian G20 last year and the South African G20 this year. And there'll actually be a major event on digital public infrastructure in Cape Town later this year, which is very much building on that Indian model. And that's the area we're very excited about, going forward. In the context of the announcement on doubling the investment that you've made so far and the Foundation, as you go forward, are there any new focus areas that are going to come in India, because you spoke about agriculture, and I know you've been doing some work there? One area which I think would be of special interest to India is climate adaptability, given the fact that we are already seeing some of the impacts of the climate crisis play out in various parts of the country. Could you just tell us a little bit of what the Foundation is doing in that area? Effectively, in our first 25 years, we've spent $100 billion and the commitment now is over what will be our final 20 years as a foundation, we will spend on the order of an additional $200 billion. And the intent is, we do not intend to focus on new areas. It's very much going to be focused on the existing areas that we've been prioritizing, helping drive preventable child mortality as close to zero as possible, helping really eradicate or control the world's deadliest infectious diseases, like polio. Actually, I forgot to cite that. India's great success on polio eradication, which came in 2011, which we helped support, it's the biggest milestone in polio eradication. We always thought India would likely be the last country to eradicate polio. And in fact, it's now still endemic in Pakistan and Afghanistan, where it's well over a decade since India successful eradicated polio. We hope we can eradicate malaria. Add malaria to that list and bring HIV and tuberculosis fully under control. And both of those are core priorities for Prime Minister Modi as well and the Indian government. And then the third category is helping ensure that those are able to thrive, and that is continuing to focus in the key areas of digital public infrastructure and agricultural development, with a strong focus on gender equality and women's economic empowerment. And that definitely does include climate adaptation. Our big focus on climate adaptation is really how you do more effective agricultural use? We do that in a couple of ways. One is in research and development, and we are working with ICAR, the Indian Center for Agricultural Research, which we also visited when we were in India recently, in a number of areas, including more resilient crops and livestock that can help withstand floods and droughts and more frequent weather events. And we've had some success in India over the last decade or two, in particular, a breed of rice that can stay fertile when it's submerged after flood waters for twice as long as regular rice. And so, we'll keep doing those investments and scaling them. The app I mentioned, the AI app that helps smallholder farmers, actually also works with climate adaptation by allowing much more targeted use of fertilizer and irrigation, because it's able to use these advanced technologies to both do digital soil health mapping. Climate adaptation will remain a high priority for us going forward, but very much with a focus on the agricultural development space, because that's such a critical engine for both poverty reduction, but also, more broadly, economic growth. The one point I wanted to make on that was just our, now, date of ending the Foundation, which is the end of 2045, is pretty close to the 2047 Viksit Bharat, a date that the Prime Minister and the government has set for India becoming a middle income nation. And so, certainly, our intention is to stay engaged deeply in India for our entire lifetime as a foundation. We're very proud of the work we've done. We look forward to doing a lot more work together, going forward. And we hope that the work we're doing together with the philanthropic sector, with the government, with our private sector partners, will make a critical contribution to the Viksit Bharat goal, going forward.
Daily Mail
09-05-2025
- Business
- Daily Mail
Melinda Gates reveals shocking detail about ex-husband Bill's decision to give away their foundation's entire $200 billion fortune by 2045
Melinda French Gates revealed that her ex-husband Bill Gates did not consult her before deciding to give away the massive fortune accumulated by the foundation she co-founded. The Microsoft founder, 69, announced on Thursday he will give away 99 per cent of his immense fortune in the coming years, leaving one per cent for himself and his children. 'This particular decision was made after I left,' Melinda revealed. 'It was made between Bill and Mark [Suzman, the foundation's CEO] and the board, and I think it's a fantastic decision.' He is shuttering the Gates Foundation by December 31, 2045, effectively ending a lifelong project to give away his multi-billion fortune. The tech mogul plans to distribute 'virtually all' of his wealth, approximately $200 billion, within the next 20 years. The Gates Foundation, which Gates founded in 2000 along with his ex-wife Melinda, who left the organization after their divorce, pours billions of dollars every year into health, foreign aid and other public assistance programs. Melinda, however, praised the move and claimed it had always been the former couple's plan to give away their wealth. 'That's been the plan, that the vast majority of those resources were to go back to society. I think it is fantastic that there's now a public pledge to do that,' she told Fortune. Melinda was formerly an equal partner with her ex-husband on the Gates Foundation and actually stayed on for three years after her split with him. But in June 2024, she made the shock decision to leave possibly the most influential charity in the world to spend more time at her own organization, Pivotal Ventures, to specifically help women and girls. When it comes to the Gates Foundation being wound down earlier than expected, Melinda told the Associated Press that 'the timeline was Bill's decision to make with the board of trustees.' 'I like to think that right now, the foundation's work is contributing to a child getting a vaccine or a woman opening her first bank account — and that decades from now, their families and communities are going to continue to look different, because of what that child and that woman unlocked for the people around them,' she said. Gates will hold onto just one percent of his wealth - which still equals out to an estimated $1.62 billion. He has three adult children he shares with Melinda - Phoebe, Rory, and Jennifer - whom will most likely inherit the remaining millions in cash Gates has upon his death. Melinda, who famously split from Bill in 2021, has recently stepped back into the spotlight to promote her new memoir, in which she candidly reflects on the major transitions in her life, including her high-profile divorce. In April, the 60-year-old philanthropist stunned Late Show host Stephen Colbert with her candid answer about the end of her 27-year marriage with the Microsoft founder. Melinda was formerly an equal partner with her ex-husband on the Gates Foundation and actually stayed on for three years after her split with him She explained to Colbert that her relationship with the father of her three children lacked trust and honesty, which forced her to leave. 'I learned to have a trusted relationship, which is what I wanted in marriage, both partners have to be honest with one another,' Melinda said. 'And if you can't, you can't have intimacy and you can't have trust. So in the end, I had to go.' While she did not detail what caused the lack of trust in their marriage, Melinda has previously admitted that her ex-husband's friendship with disgraced Jeffrey Epstein was a driving factor for their split. Bill has refused to say whether he was unfaithful to Melinda, but previously admitted he 'certainly made mistakes' in their marriage and claimed to 'take responsibility.'
Geek Wire
08-05-2025
- Business
- Geek Wire
Melinda French Gates offers her thoughts as Gates Foundation makes plans to sunset in 2045
Melinda French Gates, right, and Gates Foundation CEO Mark Suzman. (Gates Foundation Photo) As the Gates Foundation today announced that the 25-year-old global philanthropy will sunset in another two decades, co-founder Melinda French Gates weighed in on the influential organization's legacy. 'I like to think that right now, the foundation's work is contributing to a child getting a vaccine or a woman opening her first bank account — and that decades from now, their families and communities are going to continue to look different,' she told the Associated Press, 'because of what that child and that woman unlocked for the people around them.' French Gates resigned as co-chair of the foundation in June, roughly three years after announcing her divorce from Bill Gates. The organization has granted more than $100 billion to global health, women's initiatives, agriculture, education and other causes. 'It's easy for people to forget — or maybe they didn't ever know — how hopeless the situation seemed around the year 2000, when malaria, tuberculosis and HIV were totally out of control,' she told the AP. 'Since then, efforts funded, in large part, by development aid have saved more than 65 million lives from those diseases alone.' Also today, Bill Gates shared that he will give 99% of his fortune — roughly $200 billion — to the philanthropy to disperse by 2045, when it will cease operations. The organization currently has a $77 billion endowment. French Gates is now focused on Pivotal Ventures, a company that she founded in 2015, and recently published her second book, 'The Next Day.' Pivotal works to support nonprofits, leaders, policies and startups striving to promote social progress. 'I'm speaking my truth in society fully. I'm using every tool in my toolbox — investments, advocacy, philanthropic dollars — in ways that I think will advance society and make it better for all of us as families, and so that feels good,' French Gates recently told GeekWire. 'It's refreshing.' French Gates' own net worth is roughly $30 billion. Along with Gates and Warren Buffett, the trio created the Giving Pledge in 2010 in which they agreed to donate the bulk of their fortunes before their deaths, and encouraged others to do the same. As the leader of Pivotal, French Gates has autonomy in deciding how to approach philanthropy — a freedom she lacked at the foundation. 'As a co-founder of the Gates Foundation, I couldn't be more proud of what the Gates Foundation does, continues to do, the way it does its work,' she told GeekWire. 'But for me, for this phase of life, I am doing it a bit differently. I'm not going to build a large organization. I am going to trust more of the partners on the ground.' French Gates acknowledged that the foundation did incorporate some of those ideas, 'but I just believe that there are many ways you can do philanthropy, like I'm doing far more investing also than I thought I would do in these spaces. And then I take those ideas back to the Giving Pledge, and I also look to see what other philanthropists are doing.' Foundation CEO Mark Suzman said on Thursday that French Gates and Buffett had known of the plans to sunset the organization in 2045 and were 'supportive and excited.' Buffett, who this month announced he will retire as CEO of Berskshire Hathaway, has given the foundation $43.3 billion over the years and was a trustee until 2021. Suzman said he treasured 'the example that they have set over the past quarter century of really contributing to everything that we have been able to achieve, which could not have been done without the two of them.'
