When we invest in women, we invest in a powerful source of global development

A woman with a voice is by definition a strong woman. But the search to find that voice can be remarkably difficult.

I've travelled extensively in the last 16 years - to slums in Bangladesh, to townships in South Africa, to all kinds of places in India, etc. When I would go and talk to villagers about something like vaccines, if I stayed long enough, the women would bring the conversation around and say: "What about this family planning tool? We can't keep having the number of children we're having."

You can't save kids just with vaccines.

You can have the best vaccines for a woman or her child, but if you can't get her to come and get them then they won't work.

The fact that 98 percent of women in [the U.S.] who are sexually experienced say they use birth control doesn't make sex any less sacred. It just means that they're getting to make choices about their lives.

My undergraduate work was in computer science and economics. It just happened to be at that time when 34 percent of computer-science majors were women. We didn't realize it was at the peak at the time.