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Ankur, thanks for taking the
time to be with me today.

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I am so excited about this
because you are one of my

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favorite thinkers in the whole
space of SDGs and global development.

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But before we get into questions
about that, I actually want to

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start with something a little
more personal.

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Will you tell a bit about your
story and how you ended up at

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the Gates Foundation?

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Pleasure.

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Thank you, Jim.

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I grew up in a household which
was slightly weird.

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The belief was that you have to
dedicate your life to something

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bigger than yourself.

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My parents, they were in New
York City in the 70s, and my dad

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was a physician, was just taking
off the sort of American dream.

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And him, his friends, my mom,
everybody made a decision to

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move back to India, start a
health NGO.

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And so we went from this pathway
of like riches to a little bit

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of scarcity, but a lot of joy,

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and because they dedicated their
lives to something bigger than themselves.

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So that was the backdrop of
where I grew up.

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And India was going through the
economic boom, this reform process.

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And I decided to be an economist
and be part of the group of

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people who were going to get 400
million people out of poverty.

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And got my PhD from Chicago, and
had a thesis advisor who said

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don't be just one more smart
person to join the development

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sector—go to some other sector
where things are working, learn,

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and then bring that.

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And that brought me to BCG.

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And it was sort of the great six
years of my life. Learned a lot,

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managed to do about a third of
my time in social impact work.

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And at some point, made—decided
to make the move back and ended

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up at the Gates Foundation. And
have this really, really cool

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job now.

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Well, this is, this is like the
best kind of weird that parents

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could be, for sure, if this is
where it ends up leading you.

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And, and I am personally
thankful that that was their choice.

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And now we get the chance to
collaborate together.

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So now put that economist hat
on, put that chief strategy

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officer hat on, and we're a
little over halfway through the

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SDG period.

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Where are we?

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Where are we overall from a big
picture standpoint? The

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scorecard doesn't look great.
And the kind of issues—we don't

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have enough resources for the
battle in the next half.

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Developing countries are facing
debt burden, rich world have

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other pressing needs.

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They're inward focus, climate
change, Ukraine, migrants—that's

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competing with other needs,
which are global health and

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global development.

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And so the task is harder,
resources are thinner, but I'm

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kind of optimistic.

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OK, well, and I would love to
hear then, you know, we had this

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tremendous success in the MDG
era, the beginning of the SDG

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era, and then we've hit this,
you know, really tough plateau

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and some of the trends that
you're talking about.

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So I'd love to hear like, what
is it that's making you optimistic?

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We're at a revolution right now,
in the sense of science is—the

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scientific frontier on health
care, on agriculture

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development. Climate change is
here.

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Climate change is going to hurt
a lot of farmers. But we have

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the science that can produce
seeds that are drought

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resistant, pest resistant, like
temperature resistant.

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And so we're pushing that
frontier.

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COVID hit us five years back,
and we came up with a vaccine

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and we put shots in arms in less
than a year.

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Like this is, it's amazing.

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The scientific frontier is crazy
and it's brilliant.

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And now the AI frontier is
coming.

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When the industrial revolution
happened, we increased labor

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productivity by 400%, and you
can just imagine that happening

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once again.

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You have a teacher in a
classroom in Ghana who is faced

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with 50 kids, seven different
learning levels, where one kid

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can't even identify a number to
another one who can do 1 + 1,

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another who can do like 111 +
111.

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That kid is faced with an
impossible task of teaching

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everybody and helping everybody
grow.

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An AI-enabled teacher with the
same resources, you could just

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truly, truly change the
productivity frontier.

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And so, it's kind of exciting.

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So I am very hopeful that if we
harness the power of science and

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technology, we could do wonders.

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Thank you, Ankur.

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I share that optimism by the
way. I absolutely agree with you

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that there's this, there is a
path out and that innovation and

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scaling innovation is that way
to break the compromise.

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A hundred percent with you.

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And so glad to get to hear from
you today.

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Thanks.

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Pleasure.