Melinda Gates, one of the world's top philanthropic leaders and co-founder of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, will be a keynote speaker at South by Southwest this year.
Meanwhile, SXSW also added Austin's most well-known tech entrepreneur, Michael Dell, as a keynote speaker.
Dell last spoke at SXSW in 2014. This appears to be Gates' first keynote at SXSW. Her husband, Microsoft Founder Bill Gates, spoke at SXSWedu in 2013.
Melinda Gates recently launched a new initiative to help more women get into computer science, as well as Pivotal Ventures, a venture capital fund for research about increasing participation of girls and women in tech.
“I’ve learned that there’s a leaky pipeline that starts at kindergarten and goes all the way through university and through industry,” Gates told the Seattle Times last year.
Dell, meanwhile, will be speaking alongside Clay Johnston, dean of the Dell Medical School at the University of Texas, which had Dell's foundation as its lead donor.
SXSW announced several other well-known speakers. Those include:
- Whitney Wolfe Herd, founder of Austin-based dating and networking app Bumble, which offers a female-first approach to dating and professional networking.
- Joséphine Goube, CEO of Techfugees, a nonprofit that helps refugees through tech, will be the opening speaker of SXSW this year.
- Ray Kurzweil, one of the world's top inventors and futurists.
- Megan Smith, the third U.S. Chief Technology Officer and co-founder of shift7, which focuses on impact and economic inclusion, will join a discussions with Fei-Fei Li and Joanne Chen.
- Olivier Assayas, a French author and film director who will speak with Austin filmmaker Richard Linklater.
- Priscilla Presley, actress and executive producer of "Elvis Presley: The Searcher," who will speak with producer and musician David Porter, director Thom Zimny, producer Jon Landau and A&R executive John Jackson.
- Producer Kim Jackson and filmmaker Alex Winter will talk with journalist Logan Hill about an upcoming blockchain documentary and the impacts of decentralization.
- Westworld showrunners and creators Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy.
- Hillary Kerr is the co-founder and Chief Ideation Officer of Clique and designer, editor and author Rachel Zoe.
