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Episode 46Dec 19, 2017

With Gates’ power comes Gates’ responsibility

Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation CEO Sue Desmond-Hellmann on how to best spend $40 billion.

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With Gates’ power comes Gates’ responsibility
Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

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In 2006, Microsoft founder Bill Gates told USA Today that “with great wealth comes great responsibility, a responsibility to give back to society and a responsibility to see that those resources are put to work in the best possible way to help those most in need.”

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is the largest privately owned foundation in the world, and CEO Sue Desmond-Hellmann is charge of the $40 billion endowment. She says the foundation’s job is to listen but also to innovate, especially in areas where there isn’t an obvious commercial benefit.

On our site this week, you’ll find links to the Gates Foundation 2017 Year in Review, and you can vote on what we should call “moral capitalism.”

With Gates’ power comes Gates’ responsibility