Even the most prominent business figures have felt the impostor syndrome.
philanthropist Melinda French Gates sat down with Jay Shetty on the On Purpose podcast this week to talk about her career and personal life, namely the times she's had to find grace and embrace a sense of imperfection along her journey.
Connected: Melinda French Gates resigns as co-chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
French Gates recalled her time running Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and admitted that she “felt like an imposter for the first 10 years” and never felt qualified to “speak credibly” about the foundation's work because she was not professionally trained in global health policy or medicine.
However, one specific incident brought her to an epiphany that changed the way she approached her work and her role.
“Someone within the Foundation who was working for me at the time came up to me and wanted me to talk about something and I said 'No, no, I don't feel like I know enough,'” French Gates explained. “And this woman said to me 'Are you kidding me? Just look at all the travels you've done … all the knowledge you've accumulated?'
She said the worker gave her a wealth of examples of how she was qualified — from the different communities she's visited to the doctors and scientists she's worked with while accumulating years of first-hand experience in the field.
Connected: Melinda French Gates reveals her next move after leaving the Gates Foundation
“I could speak for so many of these women I had met who had invited me into their homes or told me about the difficult circumstances of their lives,” explained French Gates. “If they have spoken to me, I must speak their truths to the world … I know enough. I will never know everything, no one will ever know everything in the history of the Earth, but I know enough to to know what I know deep down on a core level and to speak those truths.”
French gates officially resigned as Co-Chair of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation in May, noting that under the terms of her departure, she would still have an additional $12.5 billion to spend on philanthropic work moving forward.
“This is not a decision I took lightly,” she wrote in a statement in X at that time. “The time is right for me to move forward into the next chapter of my philanthropy.”
Days latershe announced that she would donate $1 billion over the next two years to organizations that advocate for women.
Melinda French Gates net worth as of Thursday afternoon was an appreciated one 13.4 billion dollars.