American Novelist and philanthropist MacKenzie Scott, whose ex-husband is Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, has donated $1.7 billion of her wealth to charity over the past year after pledging to give most of it away during her lifetime.
According to Bloomberg Billionaire’s Index, Scott who received a quarter of Bezos’ Amazon shares in the couple’s divorce currently has an estimated worth of more than $62 billion. She is the second-richest woman in the world.
On Tuesday, July 28 Scott provided an update on her charitable donations in a Medium blog post and also announced that she has changed her last name to the middle name following her divorce from the Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos last year.
“Last year I pledged to give the majority of my wealth back to the society that helped generate it,” Scott wrote, referring to her 2019 signing of the Giving Pledge, the campaign organized by Bill Gates and Warren Buffet in 2010, in which the world’s wealthiest people vow to donate more than half their fortune to charities or philanthropic causes over their lifetime.
“Like many, I watched the first half of 2020 with a mixture of heartbreak and horror,” she said. “Life will never stop finding fresh ways to expose inequities in our systems; or waking us up to the fact that a civilization this imbalanced is not only unjust, but also unstable. What fills me with hope is the thought of what will come if each of us reflects on what we can offer.”
Here’s how Scott broke down her giving:
Racial equity: $586,700,000
LGBTQ+ equity: $46,000,000
Gender equity: $133,000,000
Economic mobility: $399,500,000
Empathy & bridging divides: $55,000,000
Functional democracy: $72,000,000
Public health: $128,300,000
Global development: $130,000,000
Climate change: $125,000,000
“On this list, 91% of the racial equity organizations are run by leaders of color, 100% of the LGBTQ+ equity organizations are run by LGBTQ+ leaders, and 83% of the gender equity organizations are run by women, bringing lived experience to solutions for imbalanced social systems,” Scott said.
“The organizations … offer a daily reminder that we can each carry more than we imagine. And they offer an opportunity to invest our good fortune in change, no matter what form our good fortune has taken.”
Her ex-husband, Jeff Bezos is the world’s wealthiest individual with an estimated worth of about $178 billion.
