Billionaire philanthropist MacKenzie Scott remarried after her high-profile divorce from Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon.
In a letter posted on the website of the nonprofit philanthropy organization Giving Pledge on Saturday, Dan Jewett, a science teacher at the prestigious Seattle school attended by her children, said he was “grateful for the exceptional privilege of being that they work with will be giving away assets with the potential to do so much good by sharing. “
What might otherwise be a very private, personal choice takes on unusual significance given the resources Ms. Scott has at her disposal – $ 53 billion according to Forbes’ latest estimate – and her stated intention to give most of them away.
In addition to the note on the Giving Pledge website, Ms. Scott, a published writer, changed her authoring page on the Amazon website to read, “She lives in Seattle with her four children and husband Dan.”
The Giving Pledge was launched in 2010 by software mogul Bill Gates, his wife Melinda and billionaire Warren Buffett. The signatories agree to give away most of their assets.
For Ms. Scott, her remarriage is the latest twist in a life in which she has quietly but firmly set the boundaries of her own privacy. Instead of remaining anonymous, she announced nearly $ 6 billion in grants and gifts in two posts on the Medium website last year.
“I called this discreet transparency. It’s basically about transparency, but only on donor terms, ”said Benjamin Soskis, senior research fellow at the Center for Nonprofits and Philanthropy at the Urban Institute. “There is a simulacrum of transparency, but it’s still completely discretionary.”
Ms. Scott holds a unique place in the world of mega-philanthropy. She doesn’t have the decades of experience that Mr. Gates or former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg have built. But by the sheer speed and volume of her donations and the way she gave her gifts with few of the very restrictive terms and onerous reporting requirements that had become common, Ms. Scott managed to get the debate over the direction of the donations move field.
She was extensively devoted to YMCA and YWCA chapters across the country, food banks, and historically black colleges and universities. She donated to organizations working for women’s rights, LGBTQ equality, and the fight against climate change and racial inequalities.
Their influence was evident in a report published jointly by the Candid groups and the Center for Disaster Philanthropy last week. The groups found that $ 4 billion of the $ 6 billion Ms. Scott gave away last year could be viewed as a pandemic response that accounts for nearly three-quarters of Covid-19 donations from billionaires and other wealthy people People accounted for.
“She made a big impression,” said Grace Sato, director of research at Candid. “The way they existed swung the trends in what we saw.”
The Wall Street Journal first reported Ms. Scott’s remarriage.
Ms. Scott was married to Mr. Bezos for 25 years. They divorced in 2019 and their stake in the divorce settlement was 4 percent of Amazon’s stock. While her ex-husband became a mainstay of the tabloid after their divorce, hanging out with fellow magnates and celebrities on superyachts, Ms. Scott largely stayed out of the spotlight.
In a statement, Mr Bezos said, “Dan is such a great guy and I am happy and excited for them both.”
It is unclear when Ms. Scott and Mr. Jewett were married. She hadn’t said anything about him in public around her for the past year. Their representatives did not respond to requests for comment.
“In a happy coincidence,” Jewett wrote in his letter posted on the Giving Pledge page, “I am married to one of the most generous and gracious people I have known – and I join her in sharing.” tremendous financial wealth to serve others. “
“I don’t find it that surprising to me that she added her husband,” said Debra Mesch, professor at Indiana University’s Women’s Philanthropy Institute. “She says, ‘We are a couple now and our household donations will be together.’ A lot of couples do that. “
Mr. Jewett described himself as a “teacher for the majority of my life” noting the oddity of an explanation of his intentions “since I have never tried to amass the wealth necessary to feel like something special would matter. “Mr. Jewett teaches at Lakeside School, which Mr. Gates has among its prominent alumni.
Mr. Soskis of the Urban Institute said that in the past, the events that shaped decision-making occurred rather late in life and focused on retirement and death in the form of estates. Leading philanthropists are much younger now and raise new questions. Priscilla Chan and her husband, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, named the birth of their daughter as a motivating factor for their donations.
“The fact that giving now takes place in the prime of life means that decision-making and narrative-giving will be shaped by various life cycle events such as divorce, marriage, and childbirth in a way that it was 30 or 40 years ago wasn’t really the case, “said Mr Soskis.
Jack Begg contributed to the research.
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