- Last year
Jeff Bezos and his wife MacKenzie divorced, leaving her with a fortune of about $36 billion and thirteenth-richest person in the world. - In a blog post on Tuesday MacKenzie announced she has donated $1.7 billion to 116 organizations over the past year.
- She has also changed her name to
MacKenzie Scott .
MacKenzie Scott, ex-wife of Amazon's billionaire chief executive Jeff Bezos, has donated $1.7 billion of her wealth in the past year to causes including racial equality, LGBTQ rights, public health and climate change, she said in a $4 on Tuesday.
Scott, who was previously known as MacKenzie Bezos, also announced her new last name, which she said was taken from her middle name.
Last year, Scott signed the Giving Pledge in a commitment to donate the majority of her fortune after her split from Bezos — the world's richest man — left her with a 4% stake in Amazon.
"Like many, I watched the first half of 2020 with a mixture of heartbreak and horror," she wrote in a post on Medium.
"I began work to complete my pledge with the belief that my life had yielded two assets that could be of particular value to others: the money these systems helped deliver to me, and a conviction that people who have experience with inequities are the ones best equipped to design solutions," she added.
In her blog post Scott listed a total of 116 organizations which she has donated to. She also broke down how much she has donated to various causes by category, the top three causes Scott donated to were: racial equity ($587 million), economic mobility ($400 millon), and gender equity ($133 million).
At the time of the divorce, Scott's Amazon stake was worth about $36 billion. Her fortune has grown to over $60 billion with a jump in Amazon's shares this year. Jeff Bezos' fortune has also skyrocketed, growing by more than $60 billion since the beginning of this year putting his net worth at roughly $178 billion, per $4.
Scott made her announcement a day before Jeff Bezos will appear for his first-ever Congressional testimony in front of an antitrust panel, which has been investigating how Amazon has allegedly used its market power to hurt smaller rivals.