Photo Illustration by Elizabeth Brockway/The Daily Beast/Reuters
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is the world’s largest private charity, with more than 1,800 employees and a $67 billion endowment—larger than most countries’ GDPs.
The foundation frequently makes news for its work tackling poverty and public health crises, including initiatives to eradicate polio and help impoverished farmers deal with climate change.
On Tuesday, journalist Tim Schwab published a new book, The Bill Gates Problem, which argues that the charity doesn’t merit its high esteem. Rather, in Schwab’s view, the foundation is steered by the whims of its male founder, and though it operates at the scale of a nation state, it does so with limited transparency.