WILLIAM H. GATES, SR. was a founding partner at Preston Gates & Ellis, and served as president of both the Seattle/King County Bar Association and the Washington State Bar Association. He has been a member of the University of Washington's Board of Regents since 1997. In 1994 he became director of the William H. Gates Foundation, which merged in 2000 with the Gates Learning Foundation to create the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. The Seattle-based foundation has an endowment of approximately $27 billion through the personal generosity of his son, Bill, founder of Microsoft, and daughter-in-law Melinda Gates. At the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, the Gates Foundation has established the Bill & Melinda Gates Institute for Population and Reproductive Health. (Pictured, left to right: Robert Blum, William Gates, and President William Brody, taken at dedication.)

ROBERT WM. BLUM, the inaugural William H. Gates Sr. Chair in Population and Family Health Sciences, is a leading authority in adolescent health. He joined the Bloomberg School of Public Health in January 2004 and heads the Department of Population and Family Health Services. Dr. Blum was keynote speaker at the White House Conference on Youth in May 2000, and has been honored by the American Public Health Association with the Needleman Award. In 1993 he was the recipient of the Society of Adolescent Medicine's Outstanding Achievement Award. His research interests include adolescent sexuality, chronic illness, and international adolescent health care issues.