MacKenzie Scott, who you all may know as the ex-wife of Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos is doing more good for the world than Bezos ever did in his entire career.

Ever since the two parted way, novelist and philanthropist MacKenzie Scott has donated $1.7 billion of her huge wealth last year. She has shown that with power comes great responsibility, and by using her privilege, she reached out to the lives of people impacted by gender discrimination and racism. She helped and made generous contributions to organizations helping the LGBTQ+ community. Furthermore, she has made donations to combat climate change, improve public health and create economic mobility. She has a net worth of approximately $60 billion, all thanks to the recent gains in Amazon business.

The announcement regarding her donations was made via a Medium post where she used her middle name. She has joined a campaign called The Giving Pledge which was created back in 2010 by Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates and billionaire investor Warren Buffet. This organization works to encourage the world wealthiest individuals to donate generously.

In her blog post, she wrote about the pledge she took last year after gaining humongous wealth.

She decided last year to donate most of her wealth back to today's society that actually contributed to it. She aims to continue the practice until she is fully satisfied. She believes that personal wealth is indeed the product of actually collective effort along with social structures that offer opportunities to people as well as obstacles to some. 

She said that she has witness the horror and heartbreak of 2020. There are a lot of inequities present in our system and it will continue forever. Thus, she aims to offer as much as she can to society and see how it truly brings a change. 

Below, we’ve listed the causes for which she has contributed a large chunk of money.

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

She further elaborates why she selected these particular causes and the thought process behind such a strong stand.

“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 a major impact on a variety of causes. 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.”

Now obviously Bezos is still the world’s wealthiest man today. However, do you know that his divorce was caused by a huge cheating scandal? Apparently he cheated on Scott by having an affair with Lauren Sanchez – a news anchor.

The divorce settlement was of course expensive. Scott received a quarter of Bezos’ Amazon holdings and that qualified her amongst the world’s top five richest women.

Despite having so much wealth, Bezos has not signed The Giving Pledge – which adds him to the shortlist of five selfish billionaires. 

This has been quite a controversy because of his lack of philanthropic ambition and Scott’s willingness to donate to nonprofits has divided the world in two.

Good for MacKenzie Scott!