Melinda Gates: Co-founder of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation

Melinda Gates is the wife of Microsoft co-founder and billionaire Bill Gates. In 1987, she became a product manager at Microsoft, where she met her husband. But Gates is still very much an independent woman. At Microsoft, she helped to develop the budget-travel-resource Expedia.

The Gates have started several philanthropic foundations. The best known is the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which began in 1999 by combining several earlier foundations. This one is famous for trying to reduce worldwide poverty and improve health. President Obama awarded the couple with the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2015.