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

Melinda French Gates’ new book, “The Next Day,” describes major challenges the philanthropist has confronted over the course of six decades. (Photo of Gates by Jason Bell)Yes, Melinda French Gates has an estimated net worth of nearly $30 billion, runs an organization with ambitious goals to improve the lives of women globally, and formerly co-led the world’s largest private philanthropy — the Gates Foundation — with her now ex-husband Bill Gates.And no, most of our lives look almost nothing like hers at first glance.But French Gates’ new book, titled “The Next Day,” feels surprisingly relatable as she describes major challenges she has confronted over the course of six decades, providing her insights and self-reflections on how she navigated the experiences and what she learned from them.The book, which comes out today, reads like a long conversation with a good friend who gives some gently offered advice that you might just want to consider if facing your own insecurities, parenting self-doubts, the slowly unfolding death of a loved one, and denial about an unraveling relationship.“The Next Day” is not a tell-all — there are no sordid details about her divorce and its fallout — but instead discloses her emotional struggle to accept the inner voice telling her that Gates “had betrayed not only our marriage but also my values.” She recounts an ugly cry, alone in the car, listening to Willie Nelson, after delivering her decision to leave the marriage.In a GeekWire interview ahead of the book’s release, French Gates said she felt compelled to write the slim volume after giving the commencement address at her youngest daughter Phoebe’s graduation from Stanford University last June, where she foreshadowed the book’s themes of how to handle transitions and the importance of your actions after that moment of inflection.French Gates, who grew up Catholic, throughout the book incorporates ideas and writings from wide-ranging poets, authors and religious leaders to whom she has turned for grounding and guidance. She practices meditation, promotes therapy, and urges readers to not rigidly pursue goals or strive for perfection.One of French Gates’ own “next day” realities was leaving the Gates Foundation last May and shifting her professional focus to Pivotal Ventures, a company that she founded in 2015. Pivotal works to support nonprofits, leaders, policies and startups striving to promote social progress.It’s French Gates’ first sole leadership role of a multi-billion dollar organization after nearly 25 years of jointly leading the foundation.“I feel like I’m walking and talking my values … I’ve said this for a long time, that a woman should have her full voice, her full decision-making authority, and her full resources that she can put to use in any way she wants,” she told GeekWire. “And so I’m now doing that.“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,” she continued