Who is Mackenzie Scott?

The 110-year-old Girl Scouts of the USA organisation announced on Tuesday that philanthropist MacKenzie Scott had donated $84.5 million to the group and 29 of its local branches.

Since the Girl Scouts were founded in 1912, this is the largest donation made by a single person. The funds will help the group bounce back from the negative impacts of the pandemic, which decreased membership.

Also read: MacKenzie Scott gives $85 million to US Girl Scouts, largest individual donation they ever received

Who is Mackenzie Scott? 

Mackenzie Scott is the former wife of the world’s richest man, the Amazon founder Jeff Bezos. Bezos and Scott were married for 26 years and divorced four years ago on April 4, 2019. As part of the divorce settlement, Scott had received 4% stake in Amazon worth $36 billion in 2019. 

Over the years, she has donated close to $12 million to various philanthropic organisations. In a June 2021 Medium post, she wrote, “Me, Dan, a constellation of researchers and administrators and advisers — we are all attempting to give away a fortune that was enabled by systems in need of change.”

As of September 2022, her net worth is US$33.4 billion making her the third richest woman in the world.

Scott was born on April 7, 1970, in San Francisco, California. She got her bachelor’s in English from Princeton University while studying under Noble Laureate Toni Morrisson. The novelist had described Scott as “one of the best students I’ve ever had in my creative writing classes” and took her on board as a research assistant for the 1992 novel Jazz. 

She got married to Jeff Bezos in 1993 when Bezos was running Amazon from his garage as only an online bookstore. The couple has three boys and one adopted daughter from China.

In 2005, she published her first novel titled The Testing of Luther Albright which won an American Book Award in 2006. 

She was named in Time Magazine’s 100 most influential people in 2021 for her philanthropic activities.