40% of Bill Gates = More Brains, Clout and $

Now that Bill Gates has resigned from Microsoft, many wonder just how much time is he going to give to the Gates Foundation and what that new focus will amount to for the sector globally.

For what Fortune magazine calls "Bill Gates 2.0," Gates will allocate blocks of time to each of three locations in a given week: one day in Redmond at Microsoft; two days about 15 miles away at the Gates Foundation in downtown Seattle; and two days at a personal office closer to home where he will explore his "work-class curiosity" (read: new ventures that may help the foundation).

His new role at the foundation will be "chief strategic thinker" in addition to his duties as co-chair with his wife, Melinda, and his father, Bill Gates, Sr. According to the article, he is expected to delve into the root causes of problems -- be they fundamentally scientific, legal or other -- and find new drivers for social change.

Perhaps more important is the time he has set aside to "make more public appearances and do more arm-twisting of governments, corporations and fellow billionaires to do more for the world's poor." Says Gates, according to the article, "There's a big category of my time for talking to drug companies, cell phone companies, banks and technology companies, as well as talking with other people who are lucky enough to have super-big fortunes about how they want to give those back to society."

So we get 40% of his brains and his clout. And he's going to cajole others to give more money. That is going to be a very good thing.

In fact, one of the very first things the Gates Foundation announced after the retirement is how he is putting his brains/clout/$ together with Bloomberg's brains/clout/$ to combat the global tobacco epidemic.

According to a July 23 press release, their "combined investment of $500 million will help governments in developing countries implement proven policies and increase funding for tobacco control. Unless urgent action is taken, as many as one billion people this century --more than two-thirds in the developing world -- could die from tobacco-caused illnesses." .

According to the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Health, the "the Bloomberg-Gates campaign will concentrate on five nations with the highest smoking rates -- China, India, Indonesia, Russia and Bangladesh -- by implementing the UN's proven MPOWER package, which includes interventions such as monitoring use, warning about the dangers of tobacco use, enforcing bans and so on.

Bill Gates' brains and clout for every two days out of five will undoubtedly be a boon for the sector, agreed?

Carla E. Dearing