Microsoft

Key people

• Bill Gates is affiliated with Alwaleed bin Talal and other billionaires through the Breakthrough Energy Coalition.
  • Gates held a strategic meeting in 2009 with George Soros, David Rockefeller, Michael Bloomberg, Oprah Winfrey, Ted Turner, Warren Buffett, Eli Broad, Julian Robertson of the Environmental Defense Fund, and former Gates Foundation CEO Patty Stonesifer.
• Ed Fries, founder of Microsoft Game Studios, is affiliated with Phil Fish, Eric Zimmerman, and Rami Ismail through Execution Labs
• Samir Ramji and Bryan Kirschner, Microsoft's former heads of Open Source strategy, were among the 16 employees of Apigee which served clients in the Middle East.
  • Apigee's head of developer relations Shanley Kane co-founded Model View Culture.
• Kate Edwards, Microsoft's first Geopolitical Strategist, was head of the International Game Developers Association and was among the people following OpGamergate.
• Suhail Khan, Microsoft Director of External Affairs, was an attorney at WilmerHale and a board member of Voto Latino.
  • WilmerHale provided a team of three attorneys for Zoe Quinn's lawsuit against Eron Gjoni.
  • Khan was recruited by Fred Humphries, Microsoft’s vice president of U.S. government affairs
  • Khan's father Mahboob Khan co-founded the Islamic Society of North America.
• Sue Bohle, Microsoft's first PR agent, planted Nick Wingfield's New York Times article "Feminist Critics of Video Games Facing Threats in GamerGate Campaign" featuring Anita Sarkeesian
  • The Bohle Company manages the Game Developers Conference, Penny Arcade Expo, and Serious Games Association
• William Neukom, Microsoft's lead attorney from 1978 to 2002, is on the boards of the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University, the Dean's Council at Stanford Law School, the World Justice Project, the Pacific Council on International Policy
• Microsoft Research hosted the 2012 Social Computing Symposium at Fuse Labs whose attendees included Anil Dash, Clive Shirky, Del Harvey, Joi Ito, Katie Salen, and representatives of USC Annenberg, Betaworks, Awesome Foundation, an Global Voices.
• danah boyd of Microsoft Research is affiliated with the Kinder and Braver World Project / Born This Way Foundation which is affiliated with the MacArthur Foundation, Berkman Center, California Endowment, Blue State Digital, WME Foundation, and Proskauer Rose

Microsoft and Gamergate figures

Microsoft and Phil Fish

The Creative/Production team of Microsoft's Execution Labs included Phil Fish, Eric Zimmerman, Jonathan Blow, Heather Kelley, and Mare Sheppard.

The Mentors team of Execution Labs included Ed Fries and Sue Bohle of Microsoft and Rami Ismail of Vlambeer.

Microsoft and Anita Sarkeesian

According to the Washington Post:

Edwards has been a vocal supporter of Sarkeesian and of the two other women who've been threatened the most, developers Zoe Quinn and Brianna Wu.

Microsoft and Randi Harper

Microsoft search engine Bing incorporated GGAutoblocker, filtering out Kentucky Fried Chicken from its search results.

Microsoft and Brianna Wu

Brianna Wu visited Microsoft headquarters and announced a partnership with Microsoft within days of becoming involved in Gamergate.

• July 1, 2014 "I have contacts at Microsoft"
• September 16, 2014 "We're currently working with Microsoft looking at other venues."
• September 30, 2014 "Microsoft HQ is pretty posh."
• October 9, 2014 " my company is in the middle of a partnership with MS"

Wu began receiving harassing tweets from "chatterwhiteman" within days of announcing the partnership with Microsoft.

The Gates Foundation

The Gates Foundation is affiliated with:

• The Bridgespan Group and Yad Hanadiv, the Rothschild Foundation, through Fay Twersky, Director of Impact Planning and Investment for the Gates Foundation; Nick O'Donohoe, Senior Adviser for Blended Finance at the Gates Foundation; Brian Trelstad, CIO of the Acumen Fund which is funded by the Gates Foundation and was advised by Louis Boorstin of the Gates Foundation.
• George Soros and Wadah Khanfar through the International Crisis Group, which is funded by the Gates Foundation
• John Doerr, Sheryl Sandberg, Mo Ibrahim, Larry Summers, Morton Halperin, and others through One.org whose board includes Mark Suzman, chief strategy officer of the Gates Foundation
  • Joseph Cerrell, Global Managing Director of the Gates Foundation, is a board member of One.org
• Warren Buffett is a Gates Foundation board member
• Connie Collingsworth is on the boards of Women's World Banking and the Gates Foundation
• Mimi Ito of DMLHub through Carina Wong, head of education investing for the Gates Foundation
• The Institute of Play, whose board includes Steven Masur of Industrial and Technology Assistance Corporation, Robert Gehorsam of Sony, Viacom, and CBS, Eric Zimmerman, and Katie Salen, funded by Carina Wong
  • The Institute of Play is hosted at Parsons, the New School formerly known as the Frankfurt School
• The UN Broadband Commission through Jessica Dorr of the Gates Foundation
• Milo Yiannopolous through Young Rewired State and the Indigo Trust
• Transgender through Surita Sandosham and Stefano Fabeni of The Heartland Alliance and Synergos.
• David Washington of the White House Office of Public Engagement and California Endowment, interim CEO of the Gates Foundation
• Katelyn Sabochik, senior communications officer at the Gates Foundation, was Director of New Media at the U.S. Department of Interior, joined White House New Media team in 2010, senior strategist at Blue State Digital, Political Online Communications Coordinator at AFL-CIO, and is affiliated with the New Organizing Institute.
• Susan Desmond-Hellman, CEO of the Gates Foundation, is UC San Francisco chancellor and a board member of Facebook
• Avaaz through Ricken Patel, a former Gates Foundation employee
• Michael Sulik of the CIA National Clandestine Service and Blake Mobley of the Century Foundation's Homeland Security Project through the Threat Pattern company of Trevor Neilson, Director of Special Projects and Director of Public Affairs for the Gates Foundation.
• Farah Pandith through Planet 50-50, an initiative of UN Women supported by Melinda Gates
• The Ad Council through Daniel Greenstein, director of postsecondary education for the Gates Foundation
• The Common Core educational project
• Leigh Morgan, former COO of the Gates Foundation, is a member of Duke University's Center for the Advancement of Social Entrepreneurship (CASE)
• Helene Gayle of CARE USA, was with the Gates Foundation from 2000-2005
• Melissa Hagemann of the Open Society Foundations served on the Gates Foundation's Global Library Initiative.
• The International Fact Checking Network run in partnership with the Open Society Foundations and the Omidyar Network
• Medium.com is directly funded by the Gates Foundation, receiving $400k in 2015.

The Gates Foundation controls the Global Good Fund and the Greenbriar Equity Fund.