The nouveau riche divorcee and socialite MacKenzie Scott, formerly MacKenzie Bezos, has already donated nearly $1.
7 billion of her fortune to a variety of organizations and causes after pledging last year to give most of it away during her lifetime, apparently making her vows stick to the truth in which she made through several media interviews and court documentations.
Scott on Tuesday provided an update on that effort in a post on Medium and also announced that she has changed her last name to the middle name she grew up with, following her divorce from Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos last year.
Through sources, we now know that Scott received a quarter of Bezos’ Amazon shares in the couple’s divorce settlement last year. This means that she has a humongous 4% stake that was worth more than $35 billion at the time of her separation.
Her net worth is currently estimated to be around $60 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaire’s Index.
“Like many, I watched the first half of 2020 with a mixture of heartbreak and horror,” Scott wrote. “What fills me with hope is the thought of what will come if each of us reflects on what we can offer.” The $1.7 billion donation that she has made will be given to organizations working in “areas of need,” she added, including racial equity, LGBTQ+ equity, functional democracy and climate change.
Among the organizations she backed are the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund, the Obama Foundation, the George W. Bush Presidential Center, RAINN and the European Climate Foundation.
Scott signed on to the Giving Pledge initiative last year. The initiative, launched by Warren Buffett and Bill and Melinda Gates, encourages the world’s richest people to dedicate a majority of their wealth to charitable causes, either during their lifetimes or in their wills.
Bezos, the world’s richest man, has previously been criticized for not contributing more of his wealth to philanthropy, but has donated billions of dollars in recent years to causes including climate change and food banks.
He has never signed the Giving Pledge. The announcement comes after the news came that Bezos, along with Tim Cook, Mark Zuckerberg will be standing in a congressional hearing into possible charges of oligopoly in the online market infrastructure.
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