Melinda French Gates sowed the seeds quietly, without fanfare.
In 2015, while still married to Bill Gates, she founded Pivotal Ventures, a move so subtle that the company’s existence was not known until a reporter accidentally stumbled upon its website.
At the time her spokeswoman Catherine St-Laurent, who later spent a year as chief of staff to the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, described it as “a vehicle, when the time comes, to help explore potential other initiatives that don’t fit naturally or neatly within the foundation’s programme areas”.
That time, insiders suggest, has now come.
French Gates announced on Monday that she was leaving the Gates Foundation and branching out on her own. She is expected to work largely through Pivotal Ventures, which as