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.
William H. Gates Sr. Chair in Population and Reproductive Health
Bloomberg School of Public Health
Established in 2004 by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation in honor of William H. Gates, Sr.
Held by Cynthia Schaffer Minkovitz
CYNTHIA SCHAFFER MINKOVITZ, MD, is the William H. Gates, Sr. Professor and Chair of the Department of Population, Family and Reproductive Health. Dr. Minkovitz came to the Bloomberg School in 1996 after serving as a fellow in general pediatrics at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. She obtained her medical degree from Harvard Medical School and a master’s in public policy from the Harvard John F. Kennedy School of Government. Dr. Minkovitz completed a pediatric residency and chief residency at Washington University. Her area of research focuses on enhancing the quality of preventive services for children and understanding the impact of systems reforms on the health and well-being of children and families. In addition, she directs the School’s Women’s and Children’s Health Policy Center, has a joint appointment in the School of Medicine’s Department of Pediatrics and is affiliated with the Hopkins Population Center. She has won numerous awards for her work including, most recently, the 2016 Academic Pediatric Association Research Award.