- MacKenzie Scott, 52, is a philanthropist, novelist, and the ex-wife of Jeff Bezos.
- Bezos and Scott finalized their divorce four years ago.
- Scott was raised in San Francisco and attended Princeton University.
Jeff Bezos’ girlfriend Lauren Sanchez, to whom he’s reportedly engaged, would be the Amazon founder’s second wife.
Bezos’s first wife was MacKenzie Scott. The couple were married for 25 years and have four children together: three sons and one daughter.
Bezos and Scott’s divorce was finalized in July 2019 in a $38 billion settlement, which kicked off Scott’s public journey into charitable giving. Scott is one of the richest people in the world.
Scott has signed the Giving Pledge initiative, committing to giving away half her wealth. Last year alone, Scott donated almost $2 billion to 343 organizations.
“It’s no overstatement to say that MacKenzie Scott has revolutionized philanthropy,” Krish O’Mara Vignarajah, the CEO of a refugee charity that received a donation from Scott, told Insider.
In March 2023, Scott’s philanthropic platform Yield Giving invited nonprofits to apply for a set of $1 million donations to be awarded to 250 recipients who, if selected, will receive the money without restrictions. The selections will be announced in early 2024.
Scott, 52, is also a novelist and the author of two published literary fiction books. “The Testing of Luther Albright” was published in 2005 and earned her an American Book Award the following year. “Traps” was released in 2013.
She technically authored her first book, “The Book Worm,” as a 6-year-old, but the handwritten, 142-page novel was lost in a flood.
Scott was raised in San Francisco and attended Princeton University. She worked as an assistant to Toni Morrison in college, alongside other jobs, including dishwasher, waitress, clothing salesperson, deli cashier, data entry clerk, tutor, and nanny.
After graduating, Scott worked for investment management firm D.E. Shaw as a research associate before marrying Bezos. Amazon was founded in 1993, and Scott became the company’s first accountant.
Her first novel took her 10 years to complete while she juggled the demands of her growing family. She kept a separate apartment where she would write in between caregiving duties.
In a post on publisher Weidenfeld and Nicolson’s blog, Scott said of her second novel: “I have no specific hopes about what anyone might think or feel reading ‘Traps’ except that they have fun, and that it feels real and powerful enough to them to affect how they see their own lives a little bit.”
Scott, who lives in Seattle, got remarried in 2021 to a teacher named Dan Jewett. The couple filed for divorce in 2022.
Legal experts say it’s likely Scott had a prenuptial agreement in place with her second husband. Scott and Bezos did not have one.
Áine Cain and Paige Leskin contributed to an earlier version of this story.
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