The Gift Of Hope - Bill Gates

Time may have made an astute marketing choice by nominating you as the 'person of the year', but I'd like to shine the spotlight on an unlikely candidate. Bill Gates. Anything the man does, was and is an unqualified success. He wants to be charitable. So he sets up the Bell & Melinda Gates foundation. Fine. Nothing special. World's richest guy. World's biggest charity. $30 billion. Usual stuff.

But then, with the Google boys nipping at his heels, Bill Gates decides he's had enough and turns his cold eye to really 'doing' charity. And this is where it gets interesting. He cons Warren Buffet ( Or maybe it was the other way around, as Alan Sloan brilliantly explains in Newsweek ) into handing out another $30 billion, which makes the foundation good for $60 billion. And that's just the simple math.

What Gates did in that one week of blanket media coverage was to turn philanthropy from something which Madonna and Angelina Jolie did into something which you and I can do. He made it fashionable, and cool, to give away a fortune. His actions and words are attracting talented graduates fresh out of college into the world of charity and non-profit research. A chance of getting a grant from the B & M Gates foundation is spurring non-profits and drug companies to venture into fields which they would normally avoid like the...like the...All right. This line was a mistake.

On this Christmas day, when Santa brings joy to millions of kids around the world, he has the King of the Geeks as a new intern. For bringing the gift of hope to those most in need of it, to those who have been forsaken by state and society, for lighting small sparks of charitable spirits in the hearts of millions, I give to you my 'Person of the Year 2006'. Bill Gates.