Born on October 28, 1955, Bill Gates is an American business magnate, software developer.

With his childhood friend Paul Allen, Gates co-founded Microsoft Corporation in 1975. With that he was able to become one of the richest men alive.

According to Forbes Magazine, Gates is worth $104.2 billion. Other than being one of the richest men alive, he is also a human with a kind heart. Like many celebrities, Gates tends to give back to his community. He has been donating committed grants for decades since around 1995.

The billionaire actually has his own foundation with his ex-wife called The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. This was inspired by their children. As new parents, they thought of children dying of preventable diseases every year in poorer countries. This led Gates to distance himself from tech for a while and focus on charity work. Last year, the foundation donated about $6.7 billion in eight different areas: Global Development, Global Health, United States Program, Global Growth and Opportunity, Global Policy and Advocacy, Other Charitable Programs, Gender Equality, and Operational Expenditure (www.gatesfoundation.org).

One of the most recent actions of the foundation was to eradicate life-threatening diseases such as Malaria and Aids. The foundation is also a partner of Gavi, the vaccine alliance which was created to improve immunization access in poor countries. Now, the foundation has donated more than $4 billion to Gavi, which also really helped during COVID by distributing vaccines. (gavi.org)

Gates continues to use his vast wealth to benefit the world and has set up his foundation to continue to do so for another 25 years (geekwire). “That’s probably the period of time where Melinda and I will be around to help make sure it stays on track,” Gates said at the conference in New York City, according to the Geekwire article.  Since he is currently 67 years old, it is hard to know if he will be around to see the end of his Foundation.