Jeff Bezo’s Ex-Wife Giving Away Fortune $1 Billion at a Time

After divorcing Amazon founder Jeff Bezo’s, the world’s richest man, his ex-wife MacKenzie Scott became the 12th wealthiest person in the world, and she’s using her fortune to help others. 

After walking away from their 26-year marriage with a quarter of Bezos Amazon shares in the couple’s 2019 divorce settlement, Scott became the richest woman in the world when stock prices soared during the pandemic.  

With an estimated net worth of $62 billion dollars, she has decided to give back. In May of 2019, she signed onto the Giving Pledge Initiative, founded by Warren Buffett along with Bill Gates and his wife Melinda, which encourages the world’s wealthy to donate the majority of their fortunes to charity.  

Scott pledged to dedicate half her wealth to charitable causes, while her ex-husband Bezos with a vast wealth of more than $200 billion has not signed on.  

In July, she announced that she donated close to 1.7 billion to 116 organizations and on Tuesday she revealed that she had spent more than a billion dollars a month for the last four months funding 384 organizations.  

“This pandemic has been a wrecking ball in the lives of Americans already struggling,” Scott wrote in an announcement. “Economic losses and health outcomes alike have been worse for women, for people of color, and for people living in poverty. Meanwhile, it has substantially increased the wealth of billionaires.”

Scott had a team of advisors identify those suffering most in the pandemic so she could provide them immediate support.  

“The result over the last four months has been $4,158,500,000 in gifts to 384 organizations across all 50 states, Puerto Rico, and Washington D.C. Some are filling basic needs: food banks, emergency relief funds, and support services for those most vulnerable,” she continued. “Others are addressing long-term systemic inequities that have been deepened by the crisis: debt relief, employment training, credit and financial services for under-resourced communities, education for historically marginalized and underserved people, civil rights advocacy groups, and legal defense funds that take on institutional discrimination.”

Marie Finn