Bill Gates efforts in 2016, and François Hollande awarded Bill and Melinda in the following year with France's highest national award – the Legion of Honour for their charity efforts. Entomologists named Bill Gates' flower fly, ", in his honor in 1997. Gates married Melinda French on a golf course on the Hawaiian island of Lanai on January 1, 1994; he was 38 and she was 29. They have three children: Jennifer Katharine (b. 1996), Rory John (b. 1999), and Phoebe Adele (b. 2002). Gates' oldest daughter Jennifer is an equestrian rider who competed in the 2018 Longines Global Champions Tour. The
Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation principal officers include Co-Chair William H. Gates, Sr. and Chief Executive Officer Susan Desmond-Hellmann. It had an endowment of $50.7 billion . The scale of the foundation and the way it seeks to apply business techniques to giving makes it one of the leaders in venture philanthropy, though the foundation itself notes that the philanthropic role has limitations. In 2007, its founders were ranked as the second most generous philanthropists in the US, and Warren Buffett the first. As of May 16, 2013, Bill Gates had donated $28 billion to the foundation. Since its founding, the foundation has endowed and