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November 05, 2009

Independent Sector
A Year Into the Job, Gates CEO Shares His Measures for Success

Reflecting on his first year as head of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Jeff Raikes told participants Thursday at Independent Sector’s annual meeting in Detroit: “I love my second career.”

He added: “One day I’m learning about malaria and the next day I’m learning about U.S. high school education and the next I’m learning about rural sanitation in Tanzania.”

The former Microsoft executive said he has identified three broad goals for his foundation work as he looks five, 10, 15 years out.

“What I hope is that I can look back on the Gates Foundation and see that we, with our partners, contributed to significant impact on the problems that we were focused in on,” he said.

In addition, Mr. Raikes said he is constantly pushing to improve the internal workings at the foundation and to create “a great environment for people to do their best work.”

He said his experience at Microsoft taught him to hire people who are “high energy,” have “high horsepower,” and who know how to get the job done.

As head of the foundation, he said he urges his employees to “use their good judgment to set the right priorities and make the right tradeoffs,” rather than trying to do it all. That requires giving them “the license” to make those decisions, he said.

Mr. Raikes said he frequently shares stories from his days working on his family’s farm in Nebraska as a way to convey his vision for the organization and set the tone, as well as encourage employees “to reflect on their own values.”

What’s more, Mr. Raikes said, he wants the Gates Foundation to play a role in improving philanthropy overall by passing along lessons learned and being “a good contributor to this sector.”

“If we can have accomplished those three things,” he said, “I’ll be quite satisfied with this next phase of my career.”

— Jennifer Moore

Thursday November 5, 2009 | Permalink

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