Jeff Bezos’s ex MacKenzie Scott gives away $2.5bn to charity

MacKenzie Scott, the ex-wife of the world’s richest person, Jeff Bezos, has given away $US1.7bn of her personal wealth to charity in the past year.

Jeff Bezos and then wife MacKenzie Scott attend the 2018 Vanity Fair Oscar Party. Picture: Getty Images

The ex-wife of the world’s richest person, Jeff Bezos, has revealed that she has given $US1.7bn ($2.5bn) of her personal wealth to charity in the past year.

MacKenzie Scott, the world’s 13th richest person, pledged in May last year to give away the bulk of her personal wealth after divorcing Amazon’s chief executive and walking away with 19.7 million Amazon shares in the most expensive divorce settlement in history.

The 50-year-old novelist — who has changed her surname from Bezos to Scott, the middle name that she grew up with after her grandfather — said that she had given money to 116 organisations so far and would “keep at it until the safe is empty”. Ms Scott is a member of the Giving Pledge, an initiative set up by the billionaires Bill Gates and ­Warren Buffett 10 years ago to encourage the wealthiest ­people to dedicate the majority of their fortune to charitable causes. Mr Bezos, 56, is the only figure out of the top five richest Americans not to have joined the initiative.

In a blog post revealing the charities to which she has donated money so far, Ms Scott wrote: “There’s no question in my mind that anyone’s personal wealth is the product of a collective effort, and of social structures which present opportunities to some people and obstacles to countless others.”

Her donations went to groups fighting for racial, gender and LGBTQ equality, as well as ­towards organisations tackling climate change or helping with economic mobility, public health and “functional democracy”.

The Times