MacKenzie Scott, ex-wife of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos , is one: The wider industry impact

Since her divorce from Bezos in 2019, Scott has given away $19.25 billion through her philanthropic platform Yield Giving, making her one of the most prolific donors of the past five years. Notably, despite reducing her Amazon stake by 42% through sales and donations, she remains worth more than $35 billion today. She has now revealed the reason why she has been donating her wealth to underserved communities.

MacKenzie Scott, ex-wife of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos , is one of the world’s most generous philanthropists.

Scott recalled two pivotal moments: a local dentist who offered free dental work after seeing her secure a broken tooth with denture glue, and her college roommate who found her crying and acted on her urge to loan her $1,000. That roommate was Jeannie Ringo Tarkenton, who witnessed firsthand how her $1,000 gift transformed Scott’s trajectory, according to a report by Fortune. After her divorce from Bezos in 2019, Scott received roughly a 4% stake in Amazon – about 139 million shares at the time – which she had earned from helping build the e-commerce giant during its early days, when she assisted with business plans and contracts. Since 2020, Scott has sold or donated approximately 58 million shares, reducing her stake by 42%. Through Yield Giving, which she founded in 2022, she has donated to thousands of organisations focused on diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI), education, disaster recovery, and other critical issues.

“It is these ripple effects that make imagining the power of any of our own acts of kindness impossible,” Scott wrote, adding, “Whose generosity did I think of every time I made every one of the thousands of gifts I’ve been able to give? It was the college roommate who found me crying, and acted on her urge to loan me a thousand dollars to keep me from having to drop out in my sophomore year,” she said. “The potential of peaceful, non-transactional contribution has long been underestimated, often on the basis that it is not financially self-sustaining, or that some of its benefits are hard to track,” Scott wrote in the blog.

Scott’s acts of kindness she received as a struggling college student has inspired her decision to donate billions from her Amazon stake to charitable causes. In an essay published recently on her Yield Giving website, Scott traced her philanthropic motivations back to moments of financial desperation during her Princeton University years, when the generosity of others made the difference between continuing her education and dropping out. “It was the local dentist who offered me free dental work when he saw me securing a broken tooth with denture glue in college. The experience inspired Tarkenton to found Funding U twenty years later, a company that offers loans to low-income students without requiring a cosigner. Get the latest technology news and updates. Download the TOI App.