Gates Meets with Students, Reporters Prior to Commencement Speech

Melinda Gates called on Duke graduates Sunday to "change the way you think about other people" and "choose to see their humanity first -- the one big thing that makes them the same as you, instead of the many things that make them different from you."

But her message to "the moral choice to connect deeply to others" was not restricted to the podium where she delivered Duke's commencement address after receiving an honorary degree. She also shared it the previous day when meeting with two groups of Duke students and the news media.

"Talking with Melinda Gates was like talking with an old friend," said Lesley Hamming, a graduating law school student. "She told us about the very personal evolution of the [Gates] foundation from just an idea while she and Bill were dating, to the struggles they had in deciding they wanted to make an impact on global health, to the private moments they have now at home evaluating its progress."

Gates met separately with Hamming and 10 other University Scholars, a program she helped launch in 1998 with a $20 million gift, and with a dozen participants from DukeEngage, which the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation helped establish in 2007 with a $15 million gift. [Her meeting with the DukeEngage students is featured on the program's website. Melinda Gates discussed the meetings on her foundation's "Impatient Optimists" site.]

Gates says being around Duke students energized her.

"It was inspiring to be in the presence of Melinda Gates, who is not only personally one of the world's great innovators but who also transmits her confidence in the ability of Duke students to find creative and lasting solutions to the world's problems," said Jonathan Bird, a University Scholar and doctoral student in history.

"Melinda emphasized that what the world most needs is innovation and innovators in every discipline and walk of life," Bird added. "[She] also explained her concept of the bulls-eye. The best way to have a big impact is to focus all of one's efforts on one target area and let the rest fall away."

Katie Guidera, a rising senior and DukeEngage participant in South Africa whose malaria awareness program was recognized last month by the Clinton Global Initiative University, found the conversation with her "long-time role model" to be “truly transformative and inspiring. As a group, we discussed the issues that really hit close to home for me: merging the fields of global health and international development, bridging global experiences with domestic interests, and finding a way to address global diseases in an interdisciplinary way."

"Until now, I've envisioned my pre-DukeEngage and post-DukeEngage lives as separate entities," said Ray Liu, a sophomore who served with DukeEngage in China. "Meeting Melinda Gates helped me realize that passions are not uni-disciplinary and that nothing is truly mutually exclusive."

Saher Valiani, a graduating senior who worked with migrants in Tucson through DukeEngage, said the "conversation reinforced my initial motivations to continue civic engagement well past college and use the connections and tools I gained from DukeEngage to tackle societal problems at home and abroad. I truly valued the opportunity to engage in conversation about issues of great global importance with one of the world'a most engaged civic leaders."

Gates urged Valiani and the others to continue their work, saying, "I hope you will take that seed, that spark, keep it alive and come back to it."

She praised the students later at a press conference with local and national reporters, saying, "They've seen things in the world that most college students don't see. They're now thinking about the world in a different way."

She said her message to them and others is to stay connected, get involved, resist complacency and listen carefully to the people and communities they seek to help. "Today's innovations make new things possible for people," she said.