Melinda French Gates is taking advantage of an exit ramp in her divorce settlement with Bill Gates: She announced Monday that she is resigning from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation with enough money to start a philanthropic venture of her own, reports CNBC. French Gates said she will leave with $12.5 billion and focus on improving women's equality around the world. Her last day will be June 7. The foundation she began with her then-husband in 2000 has since become one of the biggest and most influential such groups in the world, notes the Wall Street Journal.
"This is not a decision I came to lightly," she wrote in a tweet. "I am immensely proud of the foundation that Bill and I built together and of the extraordinary work it is doing to address inequities around the world." When the pair split in 2021, they agreed to keep working together at their foundation for at least two years, and to reassess after that. Bill Gates thanked his ex in a statement of his own. "I am sorry to see Melinda leave, but I am sure she will have a huge impact in her future philanthropic work," he wrote. (Bill admitted he "caused pain" in regard to allegations of affairs.)
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