MacKenzie Bezos, former wife of Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, listed 116 non-profit organizations that will receive funding as part of her pledge to give away the majority of her wealth, and said she is changing her name back to MacKenzie Scott.
A year and a half after announcing plans to divorce the world’s richest person, Scott said in a Tuesday tweet that she changed her name back to the middle name that she grew up with, after her grandfather Scott. She linked to a Medium post under that name, detailing her philanthropic pursuits.
The announcement comes just a day before Jeff Bezos is scheduled to testify, along with the CEOs of Apple, Google and Facebook, as part of a “Big Tech” Congressional hearing.
Scott said that she “watched the first half of 2020 with a mixture of heartbreak and horror” and that “life will never stop finding fresh ways to expose inequities in our systems; or waking us up to the fact that a civilization this imbalanced is not only unjust, but also unstable.”
Following up on the commitment I made last year to give away the majority of my wealth in my lifetime: https://t.co/Ocb8eU5UR1. (Note my Medium account is under my new last name — changed back to middle name I grew up with, after my grandfather Scott.)
— MacKenzie Bezos (@mackenziebezos) July 28, 2020
Her hope, she wrote, is that change can come through personal recognition of what each of us can offer. For Scott, who now ranks among the richest people in the world, the ability to give is substantial. Her net worth has increased $23.3 billion this year to $60.4 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. Jeff Bezos is now worth $181 billion, up $66.5 billion this year, according to Bloomberg.
Scott said she had so far given a total of $1.67 billion to organizations in the following categories:
- Racial Equity: $ 586,700,000
- LGBTQ+ Equity: $ 46,000,000
- Gender Equity: $ 133,000,000
- Economic Mobility: $ 399,500,000
- Empathy & Bridging Divides: $ 55,000,000
- Functional Democracy: $ 72,000,000
- Public Health: $ 128,300,000
- Global Development: $ 130,000,000
- Climate Change: $ 125,000,000
She then went on to list the non-profits.
“On this list, 91% of the racial equity organizations are run by leaders of color, 100% of the LGBTQ+ equity organizations are run by LGBTQ+ leaders, and 83% of the gender equity organizations are run by women, bringing lived experience to solutions for imbalanced social systems,” Scott wrote.
