--- description: Find out why Melinda French Gates was selected for the list title: TIME100 Climate 2023: Melinda French Gates image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltaf2e457960d99c88/698a4234457a524271d6822e/M-GATES.jpg?branch=production&width=1920&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 --- Nov 16, 2023 # Melinda French Gates Co-chairperson, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation by Marcius Extavour  Christian Liewig—Corbis/Getty Images Melinda French Gates co-leads the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which at the end of 2022 announced it would invest [$1.4 billion by 2025](https://docs.gatesfoundation.org/documents/bill%5Fand%5Fmelinda%5Fgates%5Ffoundation%5Finvests%5F1.4%5Fbillion%5Fin%5Fclimate%5Fadaptation%5Ffact%5Fsheet%5Fnovember%5F2022.pdf "undefined") to help farmers in lower-income countries adapt to climate change. As she writes when introducing a [white paper](https://www.gatesfoundation.org/ideas/articles/melinda-foreword-climate-and-development-finance-framework "undefined") released this summer on reforming global finance to help those most vulnerable to climate impacts: “This is about more than just fairness. It’s about the future—for all of us. Trying to build a prosperous global economy without investing in lower-income countries would be like trying to fuel the tech revolution of the 2000s while ignoring Silicon Valley. You’d be missing the future.” Melinda French Gates: TIME100 Climate 2023 ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"Article","@id":"https://time.com/collections/time100-climate/6333135/melinda-french-gates-2/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/collections/time100-climate/6333135/melinda-french-gates-2/"},"headline":"Melinda French Gates","datePublished":"2023-11-16T12:35:25.000Z","dateModified":"2026-03-03T00:26:55.742Z","description":"","url":"https://time.com/collections/time100-climate/6333135/melinda-french-gates-2/","keywords":["climate change","climate","Business","sponsorshipblock","Climate100Titans23","TIME100 Climate"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltaf2e457960d99c88/698a4234457a524271d6822e/M-GATES.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"TIME Staff","jobTitle":null,"url":"https://time.com/author/time-staff/"}],"creator":"TIME Staff","articleSection":"","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltaf2e457960d99c88/698a4234457a524271d6822e/M-GATES.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/collections/time100-climate/6333135/melinda-french-gates-2/","name":"Melinda French Gates"}}]}] ```