Welcome to Boss Files. I'm Poppy Harlow. Over the last few weeks, I've been speaking to CEOs

in some of the industries most impacted by the coronavirus pandemic. I've talked to people who

head major restaurants, food supply chain experts, educators, people who have had to rapidly

respond to the crisis that blindsided so many of us.

On today's episode, though, I talked to someone who wasn't blindsided, someone who has been

sounding the alarm for years about how vulnerable we are to pandemics, Melinda Gates.

Through the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, she and her husband Bill have worked

from the very beginning of the outbreak to fund efforts to fight the spread of COVID-19 around

the world. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation will select and fund seven vaccine candidates.

It will provide as much as $20 million more to help public health authorities in Africa and Southeast Asia to build up their disease relief efforts.

Chinese President Xi Jinping has thanked Bill Gates for his foundation's contribution in a fight against the coronavirus.

I talked to Melinda from my home studio about how the Gates Foundation has been putting billions of dollars to work to fight this pandemic.

And she has a stark warning about what COVID-19 will mean for Africa and the developing world.

When I saw what China had to do to isolate such an enormous part of their population, my first thought was Africa. How in the world are they

going to deal with this? We talk about why the U.S. was slow to recognize the risk of this virus,

her foundation's efforts to fund the search for a vaccine, and why she thinks we must keep

talking about gender inequality throughout all of this.

Here's our conversation.

Melinda Gates, thank you so much for being with me.

Thanks for having me, Poppy.

If we could just start with something you wrote in your opinion piece recently, you said,

one moment I receive updates on disease tracking models and the next, I hear that someone that I know

...