Melinda French Gates is an American philanthropist, former multimedia product developer and manager at Microsoft, and the ex-wife of its co-founder and billionaire Bill Gates. French Gates has consistently been ranked as one of the world's most powerful women by Forbes magazine. In 2000, she and her then-husband Bill Gates co-founded the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the world's largest private charitable organization. She and her ex-husband have been awarded the US Presidential Medal of Freedom and the French Legion of Honour. In early May 2021, Bill and Melinda Gates announced they were getting divorced. She was recognized as one of the BBC's 100 women of 2021.

William Henry Gates III is an American businessman, investor, philanthropist, and writer best known for co-founding the software giant Microsoft, along with his childhood friend Paul Allen. During his career at Microsoft, Gates held the positions of chairman, chief executive officer (CEO), president, and chief software architect, while also being its largest individual shareholder until May 2014. He was a pioneer of the microcomputer revolution of the 1970s and 1980s.