When Bill and I would go into meetings
like, say, with a prime minister
or a president of a country,
all the attention would
be focused on Bill.
And I think it is both
because he's very smart,
it's both because he was well-known
from what he did at
Microsoft for good reason.
And that wasn't always
easy for me at first.
But what we learned to
do was to be intentional
about how we handled it.
And so I would just
let a little time go by
in those meetings, let
a little of the initial
curiosity or energy go by,
and then eventually I would speak up.
And Bill learned to make
room for me to speak up.
And then once I spoke
up, it was kinda funny,
they went, "Whoa, she
has a lot of credibility.
She knows what she's talking about."
And Bill actually thought, he
was really humorous about it.
He thought it was very funny.
He goes, "Well, why wouldn't they think
I married somebody smart?
Of course I married somebody smart."
We also had a lot of
laughter and fun with it
afterwards when we saw a
really extreme case of it.
We would go home and laugh about it.
Because of the work that we do
together day in and day out,
it brings a heightened
intimacy quite frankly.
To hear the story of somebody dying
either together or separately,
right, it tugs at your heart.
And then you think who do
I want to share that with?
I want to share it with my spouse.
This is a sculpture that
Bill's parents gave us.
And what we love about it so much is
that it's these two birds who
are looking forward together.
And what it reminds us is these two birds,
who presumably are
mates, have a shared view
out into the world.
And to me, it reminds me that Bill and I
have a shared vision.
