Helping at Home and Overseas

The Gates Foundation recruited me in 2001 because they were starting to put a big focus on global-health issues and HIV and wanted somebody with depth of experience in this area. At that time, the Gates Foundation was very small. The whole global-health team was 10 people. Now they have a talented team of almost 300 people.

I was intrigued by the opportunity to lead CARE, because it seemed like an opportunity to pull together the different strands of my life. I think my career has been one of going from the individual to the societal to the mega societal. This was full circle back to what brought me into medicine to begin with—wanting to address social inequity. We work on everything from health, education, water and microfinance to emergencies and conflicts, agriculture and climate change—the whole bucket of things that affect people living in extreme poverty. We put a special focus on empowering women and girls, because we believe they hold the key to long-lasting social change in communities.

I feel very fortunate to be here. You reach a point in life where you know you may have more years behind you than ahead of you. I want to know that I'm using each day in ways that are meaningful to me. I want to feel that each day is better than the day before and that I'm happy to be waking up and have the opportunity to do the things I do. And when I no longer feel that, I'll do something else.

© 2008