She is one of the wealthiest women on the planet, with a fortune estimated at some 67.4 billion dollars.
A tireless worker in the shadows, she was the driving force, alongside her then-husband, behind the creation of the company we know as Amazon.
She has made donations exceeding 1.4 billion dollars to various non-profits, including LGBTQ+ organizations, racial equality groups, and many others fighting against climate change, for public health, or for social development—distributing funds among approximately 116 different organizations.
She relies on a team of non-profit advisors, with key representation from historically marginalized sexual and racial groups, who guide her to ensure her donations benefit a diverse range of causes.
Her objective is to return to society the wealth that has afforded her so much. Though the consequences of the pandemic saw their gains quadruple, it is also true that she has donated hundreds of millions toward the search for a COVID vaccine.
Currently, rather than reclaiming her maiden name, she uses the surname Scott.
Her Origins.
She was born in California in April 1970.
Even as a child, she excelled at writing stories; at the age of nine, she wrote her first novel, titled The Book Worm, which ran to 142 pages. Her parents eventually sent her to a boarding school in Connecticut, from which she graduated a year early. Subsequently, she enrolled at Princeton University, where she earned a degree in English Literature. Her thesis advisor was none other than Toni Morrison (winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1993, and the first black woman to receive the honor), who considered her one of her finest students.
Though she dreamed of being a writer, in 1992 she began working at D.E. Shaw & Co., a New York hedge fund. It was there she met a young senior vice president, Jeff Bezos, who would soon become her husband.
A year later, they were married. They moved to Seattle in the same year Amazon was founded. Its origins were those of a virtual bookstore; initially, it was to be called Cadabra, but they decided to change the name to Amazon. In those early days, they received perhaps half a dozen orders a day.
With very few employees, they worked twelve-hour days. MacKenzie handled the accounting, the orders, and the packaging. They worked in unison, side by side.
Growth of the Empire and the End of a Marriage.
As a child, Jeff had attended a school for gifted children, where he developed a passion for science fiction; Jules Verne and Isaac Asimov were his preferred authors. He is said to be a devotee of Star Trek and harbors a fear of the Earth’s resources being exhausted—which is why he finances his private space project.
Bit by bit, the virtual bookstore transformed into a commercial emporium that sells everything under the sun.
MacKenzie returned to writing in 1997, though her novel took ten years to complete. During this time, the couple had three sons and adopted a daughter from China.
However, the marriage eventually fractured. After twenty-five years of married life, they divorced. Since they were married without a prenuptial agreement in a community property state, she retained a significant portion of their Amazon shares, though she ceded much of her voting power to Jeff.
Writer and Great Philanthropist.
MacKenzie has published two novels, The Testing of Luther Albright and Traps. She won an American Book Award in 2006.
In 2014, she took a leading role in anti-bullying efforts, and she joined the “Giving Pledge”—the campaign founded by Bill and Melinda Gates which encourages the world’s wealthiest individuals to dedicate the majority of their fortune to philanthropic causes. She made significant donations toward the fight against COVID-19 and, alongside her friend Melinda French Gates, has supported initiatives like Pivotal Ventures to promote gender equality, investing heavily in projects that foster the power and influence of women in the United States.
Information extracted from various digital media.