Patty Stonesifer is the former co-chair and chief executive officer of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. On February 7, 2008, she announced that she would step aside from her role at the end of the year. In the ten years prior, she was the founding CEO of the Gates Foundation. In 1997, Bill and Melinda Gates asked Stonesifer to launch the Gates Library Foundation, which later merged with the William H. Gates Foundation in 2000. The Gates Foundation has a $38.7 billion endowment and awards more than a billion dollars a year to "improve access to advances in global health and learning."