Melanie Walker

Walker served as deputy director at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and adviser to Bill Gates at venture-capital firm bgC3.^[1] The Gates Foundation seconded her to the World Bank, where she served as director of the President's Delivery Unit during Jim Yong Kim's term as President,^[2][3] with the ambition to end extreme poverty by 2030.^[4] She is currently a professor of neurosurgery at the University of Washington School of Medicine.^[5]

In 1992, when Walker was 23 and had just graduated from college, Donald Trump introduced Walker to his friend Jeffrey Epstein, who told her he could help her work as a model for Victoria's Secret, encouraged her to finish medical school and in 1998 hired her as his personal science advisor.^[6][3] Walker maintained close contact with Epstein for many years, sending him insider information about, among others, Bill Gates and Microsoft. Walker's partner was Steven Sinofsky, head of the Windows division at Microsoft, whose severance package was negotiated by Epstein.^[6] In 2017, Walker acted as a communication channel between Epstein and Gates, whom his wife had reportedly forbidden from speaking to Epstein.^[7] That same year, Walker's employment at the Gates Foundation was discontinued, and Epstein advised her on her severance package.^[6]