MacKenzie Scott, the 18th richest person in the world, has reportedly donated about $1.7 billion of her wealth within the last year.
Following her divorce from Amazon founder/CEO Jeff Bezos in 2019, Scott announced she would donate a significant portion of her money to charitable causes. Upon the couple's highly publicized split, Scott received a 4 percent stake in Amazon, which was worth about $35 billion at the time. The value of her stocks have since surged to more than $59 billion.
"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," Scott wrote in a Medium blog post Tuesday. "Like many, I watched the first half of 2020 with a mixture of heartbreak and horror. 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."
Scott then listed the causes she had supported over the past year, including racial equity, gender equity, LGBTQ+ equity, public health, climate change, and economic mobility. She then highlighted 116 organizations that are committed to driving change, and encouraged others to support their respective missions.
"Last fall, I asked a team of non-profit advisors with key representation from historically marginalized race, gender, and sexual identity groups to help me find and assess organizations having major impact on a variety of causes," she wrote. "... 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."
You can read Scott's full blog post here. Her announcement came just a day before Bezos, the richest man in the world, testifies at a congressional antitrust hearing. He will be joined by fellow tech CEOs/billionaires Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook and Bill Gates of Microsoft.
