Microsoft exec Jeff Raikes to run Gates Foundation
The foundation has been looking for a new leader since chief executive Patty Stonesifer announced in February that she would step down.
Raikes has been president in Microsoft's business software division, responsible for such things as the Office software suite, Microsoft's server software and applications that help businesses track customers and business processes.
In the past decade, the Gates Foundation has given away more than $16 billion, mostly in global health, global development and U.S. education.
Raikes will be the foundation's second leader since its inception in 1997. He has much in common with Stonesifer, another former Microsoft executive and friend of Bill and Melinda Gates, the co-chairs of their family foundation, which now has more than 500 employees and an endowment of $37.3 billion.
"I'm absolutely thrilled to be joining the Gates Foundation," Raikes said Monday. "This is truly a dream job."
Melinda Gates said that when their friend Raikes expressed interest in the job, his selection was far from a done deal, however.
He went through the same screening process as the more than 150 other candidates. As a finalist, he was interviewed by top executives of the foundation and needed the blessing of the foundation's third-biggest donor, Warren Buffett, head of Omaha, Neb.-based Berkshire Hathaway Inc.
Melinda Gates said she and her husband each interviewed "quite a few" candidates, but they kept coming back to the same idea.
"We really wanted to find someone to build the organization as it was," she said. "We saw in Jeff the right leadership qualities."
Raikes, who grew up in Nebraska, said he met Buffett years ago when the Gateses and Buffett came to his farm and accompanied him to a Nebraska Cornhuskers football game.
He said both his experience at Microsoft and his volunteer work with various nonprofit organizations give him many of the skills he will need to run the foundation. But he acknowledged he has much to learn.
"At Microsoft, the magic of software is used to take on very interesting challenges. Here, you have a similar situation, where the use of technology ... and systems thinking is used to take on very complex problems in society," Raikes said.
He had to overcome two obstacles before deciding to take the job: his daughter's desire to have her father spend more time at home and his own concern about the way he would respond to daily exposure to human misery.
You can be the first to comment on this story.