Melinda French Gates Gets Eisenhower Fellowships Medal

2. Eisenhower Medal for Leadership and Services is awarded annually

"I'm honored to receive this recognition from an organization that promotes such an important vision of leadership, impact and community," said Ms French Gates. "From empowering businesswomen in Rwanda to supporting caregivers and children affected by crisis and conflict, the Eisenhower Fellows have set the highest standards of service."

The Dwight D Eisenhower Medal for Leadership and Service is awarded annually to a distinguished states person, business leader or other public figure who has achieved, through direct personal dialogue across borders, widely recognized advances toward President Eisenhower's vision of a world more peaceful, prosperous and just.

Previous Eisenhower Medal winners include late U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright; General Colin L. Powell; U.S. Senators George Mitchell, Sam Nunn and John McCain; former Secretaries of State James A. Baker III and Henry Kissinger; Doctors Without Borders; former New Jersey Gov. Christine Todd Whitman; Presidents George H. W. Bush and Gerald Ford; Washington Post Publisher Katherine Graham; Susan and David Eisenhower; and former Chilean President Michelle Bachelet; among others.

At the Awards Ceremony on October 13, Dr. Gates also will present the James and Carol Hovey EF Impact Award to Eisenhower Fellow Braimah Sulemana of Ghana for his groundbreaking investigative journalism of accountability in Ghana.

Sulemana was selected for EF's new annual Impact Award to recognize an Eisenhower Fellow or group of Fellows for outstanding project achievement in generating positive impact. His winning project was the establishment of a regional independent nonprofit journalism organization, The Fourth Estate, that has exposed bad governance, official corruption and misappropriation of funds in the country.