The Story Behind The Most Expensive Divorce in History

She can write too.

The pandemic forced everyone to shop online, so Amazon won big.

In 2021 alone, Amazon made $21.3 billion in profit on more than $386 billion in annual sales. This enormous success made a lot of billionaires, and no one is more willing to give their money away than Mackenzie Scott, who lives in Seattle, Washington.

Mackenzie Scott’s net worth exceeds $58.5 billion, making her the 15th richest person in the country.

Who is Mackenzie Scott?

MacKenzie Scott is an American novelist, philanthropist, and ex-wife of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos.

She was born on April 7, 1970, in California. Her father was a financial planner, and her mother was a homemaker. She graduated from Princeton University with an English degree in 1992.

In 1994, she helped her husband, Jeff Bezos, start one of the most profitable companies in the world. According to New York Times, “She was Amazon’s first accountant and was involved in its transformation from a small online bookseller to the e-commerce behemoth it is today.”

When Amazon became successful, she stepped back to focus on her family and her writing.

She was involved in one of the most expensive divorces in history.

She married Amazon founder Jeff Bezos one year later and divorced in 2019. The divorce settlement was one of the biggest settlements in history. As a result, MacKenzie Scott received $38.8 billion worth of Amazon stock.

Together, MacKenzie and Jeff had four children, and she guarded her privacy and her kids’ privacy closely. She later married a high school chemistry teacher Dan Jewett.

She is an amazing writer.

She wrote her first novel at 6. However, she wrote her first commercial novel in 2005, called The Testing of Luther Albright.

The story was about a man who believed that he could engineer happiness for his family but failed miserably. The novel won the American Book Award in 2006.

She plans to give most of her money away.

In 2019, she pledged to give most of her wealth away.

She uses a “no-strings-attached” giving ideology, meaning each organization can use the funds however they see appropriate.

She says, “I pledged to give the majority of my wealth back to the society that helped generate it, to do it thoughtfully, to get started soon, and to keep at it until the safe is empty. 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.”

In 2020, she donated to 116 organizations focused on nine areas of needs, including LGBTQ+ equity, climate change, public health, the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund, the George W. Bush Presidential Center, the Obama Foundation.

She hasn’t stopped giving her money away. Last year, Forbes estimated Scott donated $8.5 billion across 780 organizations.

She is driven by the quote.

“Do not hoard what seems good for a later place in the book, or for another book… The impulse to save something good for a better place later is the signal to spend it now. Something more will arise for later, something better… Anything you do not give freely and abundantly becomes lost to you. You open your safe and find ashes.” — Annie Dillard

I love this quote too, and I would like you to tell me what do you think about it?

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