new york when bill gates and melinda french gates announced their surprise split after 27 years of marriage they said there would be no changes to their 50 billion foundationnow about three weeks later after revelations that melinda considered divorce years earlier partly because of bills ties to jeffrey epstein and amid reports of his dubious behavior at microsoft corp there are signs change is coming to one of the worlds most powerful philanthropic organizationsmark suzman the gates foundations chief executive officer has told employees that hes in talks to strengthen the longterm sustainability and stability of the foundationim actively discussing with bill and melinda steps they and warren might take suzman said in a statement thursday referring to billionaire warren buffett the third member of the foundations boardsuzman said no decisions have been made but added that bill and melinda have reaffirmed their commitment to the foundation and continue to work together on behalf of our missionits the latest twist in what appears to be an increasingly acrimonious splitsince the divorce announcement posted to twitter there have been reports that bill had an extramarital affair and pursued other office romances with employees at microsoft the new york times on wednesday reported that gates received complaints about the behavior of michael larson who runs cascade investment which has for decades overseen the gateses fortunethe media onslaught has sullied gatess geeky techno philanthropist persona and thrown into question whether the pair can work alongside each other without disrupting the operation of the bill melinda gates foundationthe wall street journal reported thursday that they are considering bringing in outside directors citing people it didnt identifythree membersthere are currently just three trustees gates french gates and buffett who has added more than 27 billion of his own money to the foundation over the past 15 yearsany changes to the structure of the foundation could have a big impact on its focusadding more people to the board could democratize the ultimate decisionmaking process at the foundation said maribel morey a historian of philanthropy and executive director at the miami institute for the social sciencesthe threeperson board is unusually small for a foundation of its size the ford foundation which is roughly a fifth the size of the gates foundation has 15 members on its board the rockefeller foundation at a 10th of the size has no fewer than 12 at any timeexpanding the board would be a good thing said morey and they could use it to increase diversityin this moment its a mutually beneficial decision because at one level the gates foundation is under much more scrutiny morey said at another level it makes much more sense to include other people in the room when youre a divorced couple with only one other person on the boardthe fate of the foundation is just one aspect of the divorcegates 65 a microsoft cofounder is the fourthrichest person in the world with a net worth of 1438 billion according to the bloomberg billionaires indexgatess