Appearing on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, Melinda French Gates, opened up about her commitment to giving away her fortune through Pivotal Ventures, her nonprofit organization that works on projects to empower women.
“What I am doing now in full force is making sure that women’s rights are not only on the agenda, but that women are setting the agenda,” French Gates said about the company.
“One of the things I’m doing is making sure that we have far more women running for office, being able to raise funds for their positions and that they are really well trained on the legislative agenda they want to help get passed,” French Gates said. “There’s 7,000 seats at the state house level and getting women into those positions, they create great policy and it’s a great training ground then to go onto the hill in DC.”
Work like that, French Gates noted, was being done by phenomenal organizations like Vote Run Lead and Vote Mama. “But to do it at scale, it needs to be supercharged,” she said. “Part of why our women’s rights got rolled back in the United States is those organizations were starved for funding and they were playing defense. And I’ve decided to put a billion dollars to it in the next two years because I want us to play on the offense.”