“If you don’t have an effective teacher in front of the classroom, you won’t change the trajectory for students.”

I realized that the only way to get into a good college was to be valedictorian or salutatorian. So that was my goal.

When we invest in women, we invest in a powerful source of global development.

Women speaking up for themselves and for those around them is the strongest force we have to change the world.

The biggest killers of children around the world are two things: diarrhea and pneumonia. When you think about it, in the United States, kids don’t die of diarrhea anymore, but it’s a huge problem in the developing world.

Now we just really need to do the work, which we’re doing, to get contraceptives out to women worldwide.

We [with Bill Gates] started to make decisions about what we’d invest in. Then I actually started traveling for the foundation. I’ve probably been to India now eight times at least and Africa numerous times.

Bill [Gates] and I believe philanthropy can only be effective if it starts things and proves whether they actually work or not. That’s the place that governments often don’t want to, or can’t, work.

I think the Americans need to understand that a lot of times the children are bored in school, and that is why they are not staying in.

I think it’s very important that we instill in our kids that it has nothing to do with their name or their situation that they’re growing up in; it has to do with who they are as an individual.

Philanthropy is not about the money. It’s about using whatever resources you have at your fingertips and applying them to improving the world.

I care much more about saving the lives of mothers and babies than I do about a fancy museum somewhere.

Women and girls face a whole host of issues. We start with health, so we work very deeply on maternal deaths, making sure that a mom doesn’t die in childbirth, making sure that she has access, for instance, to AIDS medication.

After a number of years dating, we decided we were good partners.

All women, everywhere, have the same hopes: we want to be self-sufficient and create better lives for ourselves and our loved ones.

I learn in a different way. I learn experientially.

Kids are falling through the cracks and nobody notices it. That to me is what’s wrong with the school system.