Bill Gates to speak at Harvard

Bill Gates to speak at Commencement

Microsoft co-founder is principal speaker at Afternoon Exercises By Ken Gewertz
Harvard News Office

William H. (Bill) Gates, one of the world's most influential business leaders and foremost philanthropists, will be the principal speaker at the Afternoon Exercises during Harvard's 356th Commencement on June 7.

"I am very pleased that the Harvard community will have the opportunity to hear from Bill Gates on June 7," said Paul Finnegan, president of the Harvard Alumni Association. "His contributions to the world of business and technology, and the great example he has set through his far-reaching philanthropy, will rightfully put him on center stage in Harvard Yard. I look forward to greeting him in June."

Gates is a member of the Harvard College Class of 1977, which will celebrate its 30th reunion during Commencement Week.

Born in Seattle in 1955, Gates showed an early interest in math and science, and as a student at Lakeside School he taught himself computer programming. By the time he arrived at Harvard as a freshman in 1973, he and his fellow computer devotees at Lakeside had already founded several for-profit companies and sold their programming services to a number of clients.

While at Harvard College, Gates pursued his passion for computer programming and came to know his classmate and future business partner Steven Ballmer (who lived down the hall at Currier House). As an undergraduate, he teamed with his childhood friend Paul Allen to develop a version of the programming language BASIC for the first microcomputer, the MITS Altair. With a foresighted vision of the immense future potential of desktop computing, Gates left Harvard during his junior year to devote himself to building Microsoft, the company he and Allen founded in 1975.

Over the years, guided by Gates' leadership, Microsoft has risen to become the world's largest maker of computer software, with annual revenues now exceeding $44 billion. He served as the company's chief executive officer until 2000 and is currently its chairman and chief software architect. As of July 2008, Gates intends to relinquish his day-to-day role at Microsoft to spend more time on his global health and education work at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. He will remain as Microsoft's chairman.

Gates and his wife, Melinda French Gates, created the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation in 2000. The foundation is "guided by the belief that every life has equal value" and supports initiatives intended "to reduce inequities and improve lives around the world." With an endowment of more than $30 billion, the Gates Foundation is the world's largest philanthropic foundation. (Its endowment is expected roughly to double in size within the next several years as the result of a pledge from Warren Buffett, the CEO of Berkshire Hathaway Inc.) The foundation currently makes grants totaling more than $1.5 billion a year.

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