Jeff Bezos' Ex-Wife MacKenzie Scott Recoups $1.67 Billion Charitable Donations In Days

On Tuesday, MacKenzie Scott - the ex-wife of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos - announced she had donated $1.67bn (£1.29bn) to various charities.

You would think even for her, this would make quite the dent, but she'd actually made it all back and then some by Friday, according to CNBC wealth reporter Robert Frank.

In April 2019, she and Jeff settled the most expensive divorce in history, with MacKenzie taking 25 percent of the former couple's Amazon stocks. At the time, this left her with a 4 percent stake in the company worth $35bn (£37bn), but both her and Jeff's wealth has been boosted by increases in stock prices amid the pandemic.

However, MacKenzie revealed earlier in the week that she had distributed a good chunk of her share among many charities since her divorce, supporting BAME and LGBTQ communities, as well as climate change and other issues.

In a blog post on Medium, MacKenzie wrote: "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 civilisation this imbalanced is not only unjust, but also unstable.

"What fills me with hope is the thought of what will come if each of us reflects on what we can offer."

Since getting access to the funds from her divorce settlement, she has donated to the following causes:

• Racial Equity: $586.7 million (£454.6 million)
• LGBTQ+ Equity: $46 million (£35.5 million)
• Gender Equity: $133 million (£102 million)
• Economic Mobility: $399.5 million (£309 million)
• Empathy & Bridging Divides: $55 million (£42 million)
• Functional Democracy: $72 million (£55 million)
• Public Health: $128.3 million (£99 million)
• Global Development: $130 million (£100 million)
• Climate Change: $125 million (£96 million)

Her blog post continued: "Opportunities that flowed from the mere chance of skin colour, sexual orientation, gender, or zip code may have yielded resources that can be powerful levers for change.

"People troubled by recent events can make new connections between privileges they've enjoyed and benefits they've taken for granted. From there, many will choose to share some of what they have with people whose equal participation is essential to the construction of a better world.

"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."

Topics: World News, Charity

Jake Massey

Jake Massey is a journalist at LADbible. He graduated from Newcastle University, where he learnt a bit about media and a lot about living without heating. After spending a few years in Australia and New Zealand, Jake secured a role at an obscure radio station in Norwich, inadvertently becoming a real-life Alan Partridge in the process. From there, Jake became a reporter at the Eastern Daily Press. Jake enjoys playing football, listening to music and writing about himself in the third person.

@jakesmassey