Bill Gates Exits Microsoft Board of Directors

Microsoft founder and renowned philanthropist Bill Gates has stepped down from his company’s board of directors.

His main reason for leaving has been cited as one where he will “dedicate more time to his philanthropic priorities including global health, development, education, and his increasing engagement in tackling climate change,” stated the press release last Friday.

This comes days after The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Mastercard and Wellcome committed $125 million in seed funding for companies that are working on developing a treatment for the novel coronavirus. The money will be used “to speed up the response to the COVID-19 pandemic by identifying, assessing, developing, and scaling-up treatments.” He was one of the first to declare it a pandemic before WHO declared it thus.

Gates remains a tech advisor to Microsoft leadership including CEO Satya Nadella who said, “It’s been a tremendous honour and privilege to have worked with and learned from Bill over the years. I am grateful for Bill’s friendship and look forward to continuing to work alongside him to realize our mission to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more.”

The tech genius has not been a part of Microsoft day-to-day running since he stepped down as Microsoft CEO in 2000, and exited his full-time job with his company almost a decade later in 2008. He stayed on as chair of his board till February 2014. Gates still owns 1.3% of his company which is worth a stunning $16 billion! It will be interesting to note who replaces him to work alongside the now 12 board members.

Publishing in his LinkedIn blog post, Gates, the visionary broke down his decision stating that “With respect to Microsoft, stepping down from the board in no way means stepping away from the company. Microsoft will always be an important part of my life’s work and I will continue to be engaged with Satya and the technical leadership to help shape the vision and achieve the company’s ambitious goals.”