William H. Gates Sr. Chair in Population and Reproductive Health
WILLIAM H. GATES SR was a founding partner at Preston Gates & Ellis, and served as president of both the Seattle/King County Bar Association and the Washington State Bar Association. He has been a member of the University of Washington’s board of regents since 1997. In 1994 he became director of the William H. Gates Foundation, which merged in 2000 with the Gates Learning Foundation to create the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. The Seattle-based foundation has an endowment of approximately $36 billion through the personal generosity of his son, Bill, founder of Microsoft, and daughter-in-law Melinda Gates. At the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, the Gates Foundation has established the Bill & Melinda Gates Institute for Population and Reproductive Health.