MacKenzie Scott: This is how Jeff Bezos’ ex-wife is spending her billions
MacKenzie Scott – Jeff Bezos’ ex-wife who received billions after their mega divorce last year – has turned to philanthropy and pledged to donate half of her fortune to charities.
How MacKenzie Scott is ‘driving change’
She instantly became one of the world’s wealthiest individuals in April 2020, gaining a net worth estimated at $36 billion after finalizing the terms of her divorce with Bezos, the world’s richest man. According to 2OceansVibe, she also walked away with 4% of Amazon but showed no interest in getting back into the boardroom, leaving her voting rights with Bezos.
Now, The Telegraph reported that she’s actually following through with her promise to donate half of her fortune to charities. The publication also reports that she was worth a cool $53 billion, before she started giving it away.
Scott said she made donations to 116 organizations working toward goals like racial equity, gender equity, economic mobility, functional democracy, public health and climate change.
Jon Reily, who worked at Amazon in the 90s, and then returned in 2010 to head up its Kindle division, says that her low-key presence coupled with a giving nature is characteristic of Scott.
“She was always somebody behind the scenes; you never saw her,” Reily says. “I would say she’s a down to earth person. [Jeff] was a super geeky guy and she was the kind of person you would think would be married to him.”
“What made the Bezos family socially responsible was her,” Reily says. “Jeff’s a super nice guy. I’m not saying he’s not a great guy, but for the richest person on the planet, he doesn’t give a lot of money away and never has.”
In fact, Bezos has resisted years of pressure to sign up to the Giving Pledge, an initiative started by Bill and Melinda Gates and Warren Buffett in 2010. Scott, on the other hand, who recently married Dan Jewett, a science teacher at a Seattle private school, not only signed up but ensured that Jewett put his name on the pledge as well.
Putting the billionaire boys’ club to shame
The Pledge went from 40 members to 220, but as Chuck Collins, director of the Program on Inequality and the Common Good at the Institute for Policy Studies pointed out, among pledgers who were billionaires in 2010, only one in six actually reduced their net worth and most had dropped their money into private family foundations.
“MacKenzie Scott has put the billionaire boys’ club to shame,” Collins said. “She’s dug more deeply and meaningfully than her ex-husband, who only recently moved money to a foundation to address climate change.”
Getting the money into the right hands
Scott and her team have reportedly compiles reports to ensure that the money is going into the rights hands, where it will be used for the right reasons.
“The responses from people who took the calls often included personal stories and tears,” Scott wrote on her personal Medium blog in December 2020.
“These were non-profit veterans from all backgrounds and backstories, talking to us from cars and cabins and COVID-packed houses all over the country – a retired army general, the president of a tribal college recalling her first teaching job on her reservation, a loan fund founder sitting in the makeshift workspace between her washer and dryer from which she had launched her initiative years ago. Their stories and tears invariably made me and my teammates cry.”
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