Bill Gates's Siblings Are Just Involved in Philanthropy as the Billionaire Is

In an era when many billionaires are doing some variety of nefarious thing, Bill Gates is trying to give the ultra-rich a better name. His philanthropic efforts have been well-known for decades, and some now want to learn a little bit more about his personal life.

Bill and his ex-wife Melinda were a unit for decades and went through a fairly public divorce. His siblings, though, have flown more under the radar. Here's what we know about them.

Bill was raised with two sisters, Kristianne and Libby, and grew up in Seattle. Their father was a lawyer, and according to a Wall Street Journal profile of the family from 2009, they were in many ways a normal family of the time. They had regular Sunday night dinners and played a lot of board games.

Both Kristi and Libby are relatively private people, and neither one has amassed the kind of wealth that Bill acquired through Microsoft.

Kristi was born in 1954 and is a certified public accountant. She is married to John Blake, and the two share two children, according to The Spokesman-Review.

Libby, meanwhile, was born a decade later in 1964 and works as a therapist in Seattle. She was first married to Doug Armintrout, with whom she shares three children. She later divorced Dough and married Nick MacPhee, a former executive at Microsoft, per the Seattle Times.

Kristi ultimately started her own accounting firm in the 1980s and eventually decided to move from Seattle to Spokane, Wash. Libby, meanwhile, practices with Seattle Family Support and apparently leads "highly experiential groups” where she focuses on “developing shame resilience skills and developing a courage practice that transforms the way we live, love, parent and lead."

Although Kristi and Libby have each made careers for themselves outside of their brother's work with Microsoft, they have followed in his footsteps when it comes to devoting themselves to charitable causes. The two serve as board members of various organizations and are also on the Board of Regents for the University of Washington, a role that their parents also served in.

“They're definitely daughters of their mother,” their father said in 2004, adding that they were involved in many of the same activities their mother had taken part in. “It's a list of things that you could almost just cut and paste from Mary's resumé.”

Kristi serves on the boards of the Junior League of Spokane, YMCA Retirement Fund, Saint George's School, YMCA of the Inland Empire, Spokane Area Chamber of Commerce, and the UW Medicine and the Higher Education Coordinating Board.

Libby, meanwhile, has been on the boards of Seattle Children’s Hospital, the Make-A-Wish Foundation, the Seattle Foundation, and the UW Carlson Leadership and Public Service Center.

While neither Kristi nor Libby has the kind of financial resources that are at their brother's disposal, it seems like every member of the Gates family wants to give back as much as possible, even as they excel professionally.