By Melinda Gates
"The moment of lift" is the term NASA technicians use to describe the point when a spacecraft is aloft and is flying on its own, a term Melinda Gates learned from her NASA scientist father. She aptly applies this expression to those who've been raised up from dependance and degradation to a place where they can thrive. In this book, part memoir and part chronicle of the Bill and Melinda Gates' Foundation, Melinda gives dozens of accounts of meeting and working with people, mostly women in developing countries, to overcome challenges like child marriage, illiteracy, and female circumcision. She describes the benefits, for example, of working with young women to help them choose when and how many children to have - so they can have the time and resources to care for each one.
She shares her own experiences as a young woman in a family who supported education and encouraged her to strive to reach her goals. She had teachers who provided opportunities in computer programming, leading to an undergrad degree at Duke and ultimately landing at Microsoft in its early years, where she met her husband. She discusses her marriage, her Catholic faith which informs her work, but especially her travels to see for herself how she could use her family's fortune to most help those in need, finding that helping mothers (through education, family planning, etc) had huge benefits for helping their children thrive.
Melinda Gates' story is both tremendously informative, in seeing then needs of women through her experience, and tremendously inspiring, because she did something about it. Should be "must reading".
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