Philanthropy Innovation Summit 2025 | Mainstage Program

Jeff Raikes is a co-founder of the Raikes Foundation with his wife, Tricia. The Foundation works toward a just and inclusive society where all young people have the support they need to achieve their full potential. Key areas of focus include reimagining an educational system that creates conditions for all students to succeed; ensuring housing stability for youth; building a fair and representative democracy; and supporting donors and philanthropic organizations in moving resources toward justice.

Jeff is the former CEO of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, where he led the foundation’s efforts to promote equity for people around the world. Before joining the foundation, Jeff was president of Microsoft’s Business Division and served as a member of the company’s senior leadership team that set the overall strategy and direction for the firm. He began his career with Microsoft in 1981 and was instrumental in creating the Microsoft Office suite of productivity applications.   

Currently, he is part of the ownership group of the Seattle Mariners and serves on its board. He also serves on the boards of Costco Wholesale Corporation, the Raikes School at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, Green Diamond Resource Company, EpiCrop Technologies, EpiMethyl Analytics, and Hudl. After ten years of board service, Jeff is Chair Emeritus of Stanford University.

Nate Persily is the James B. McClatchy Professor of Law at Stanford Law School, with appointments in the departments of Political Science and Communication. He is the founding codirector of the Stanford Cyber Policy Center and its Program on Democracy and the Internet.  His scholarship focuses on the “Law of Democracy,” which addresses issues such as voting rights, political parties, campaign finance, redistricting, and election administration. He has served as a special master or court-appointed expert to craft congressional or legislative districting plans for numerous states and as the Senior Research Director for the Presidential Commission on Election Administration. He is coauthor of the leading election law casebook, “The Law of Democracy”, a volume on “Social Media and Democracy,” and most recently, he coedited “The Digitalist Papers: Artificial Intelligence and Democracy in America” (2024). His current work, for which he has been honored as a Guggenheim and  Andrew Carnegie Fellow examines the impact of changing technology on political communication, campaigns, and election administration.