MacKenzie Scott Net Worth: Giving Away Her Divorce Settlement Leaves $30B

With a billionaire tech entrepreneur for a spouse, plenty of people would choose to simply support their partner, but not MacKenzie Scott.

As an acclaimed novelist and prolific philanthropist, she is much more than her husband’s business, in which she owns a valuable stake, too.

In 2024, MacKenzie Scott’s net worth most likely exceeds $30 billion, since she has donated almost half of what she had to charitable causes.

These days, Scott is one of the ten richest women in the US and one of the richest people in the world. In 2021, Forbes named her the world’s most powerful woman – for several reasons.

For the longest time, the media knew her as Mrs. Amazon, as she lived in the shadow of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, her ex-husband.

Nowadays, the career novelist is one of the leading philanthropists, commanding vast wealth.

MacKenzie Scott’s Net Worth Breakdown:

Most people with extreme wealth like MacKenzie Scott spend their money making major investments, starting businesses, and acquiring assets.

Scott has taken a rather different approach toward spending her money, one that makes her one of the most valued people in society.

She spends most of her money on philanthropic causes and, while she has already donated over $17 billion of her personal wealth, she still has quite a lot left to give. Here is a breakdown of her wealth as it stands:

MacKenzie Scott Net Worth: Early Life, Education, and Family

MacKenzie Scott Tuttle was born on April 7, 1970, in San Francisco, California, to father Jason Baker Tuttle, a financial planner and an entrepreneur, and mother Holiday Robin, a homemaker.

MacKenzie is one of three children, with two brothers.

She grew up in Marin County, right across the Golden Gate Bridge from the city, but her family also owned a home in the Pacific Heights neighborhood in San Francisco.

Even as a child, Tuttle was a passionate writer. When she was only six years old, she wrote a 142-page book titled The Book Worm, which reportedly got destroyed in a flood.

Young MacKenzie Tuttle studied at the Hotchkiss School in Lakeville, Connecticut.

During her junior year in high school, her father became the subject of an SEC probe, so her parents had to file for bankruptcy and move to Florida, where her father attempted to start a new career in finance.

However, Jason was barred from launching a new finance company in 1989 due to the family’s lavish spending in the past.

After obtaining her diploma in 1988, MacKenzie enrolled in Princeton University and obtained her Bachelor’s degree in English in 1992.

One of her mentors at the university was a Nobel Laureate in Literature, the author Toni Morrison, who once said that Tuttle was “one of the best students I’ve ever had in my creative writing classes.”

Even though she was born into a rather wealthy family, the crisis surrounding her father’s SEC probe left them nearly penniless, so MacKenzie Scott had to work multiple jobs to cover her university expenses.

Right after graduation, she landed a job at a hedge fund, where she met Jeff Bezos.

Scott and Bezos

In 1992, when MacKenzie Tuttle was working as a research assistant at D.E. Shaw, she met Jeff Bezos.

The couple married after three months of dating and, by 1994, they had moved to Seattle, Washington. Scott has four children with Bezos: three sons and a daughter they adopted from China.

In 2019, she divorced Bezos and received 25% of the family’s Amazon stock, which equated to 4% of the company. At that time, this was valued at about $35.6 billion, while her ex-husband kept 75% of the shared stock. This positioned her as the third richest woman in the world in April of that year. By September 2020, she was recognized as the world’s wealthiest woman with a net worth of roughly $60 billion.

Following the divorce from Jeff Bezos, MacKenzie Bezos changed her name to MacKenzie Scott, using her middle name as her surname.

Scott’s Marriage to Dan Jewett

In 2021, MacKenzie Scott married high school science teacher Dan Jewett, whom she met at her children’s school. Their marriage was publicly revealed in Jewett’s Giving Pledge letter on March 6. However, this marriage didn’t last long and, in September 2022, Scott filed for divorce, which was finalized at the beginning of 2023.

MacKenzie Scott Net Worth: From Humble Beginnings to Extraordinary Wealth

Following her Princeton University graduation in 1992, Scott moved to New York where she found a job with D. E. Shaw, a hedge fund. Working there, she met the Senior Vice President Jeff Bezos, whom she married in 1993.

While at Shaw, Bezos recognized the potential of the internet and pitched his plan for an online bookstore to his wife.

In 1994, the duo decided to leave D. E. Shaw and start a business using Bezos’ business plan. They did this from their garage in Seattle. Not long after, the idea would go on to become Amazon, one of the largest tech companies in the world.

Amazon

Even though Jeff Bezos was the main person behind Amazon, Scott was one of the key contributors in the early days of the company, heavily involved in her husband’s business and working on the accounts, business plans, early orders, and more.

She was the one who negotiated Amazon’s first freight contract. She supported her husband in his idea and helped him brainstorm products that could be sold online.

Initially, the Bezos family decided to name the business Cadabra, but Bezos later renamed it to reference the Amazon River.

The couple used a $300,000 angel investment to get the business off the ground and founded Amazon on July 5, 1994 – famously from their garage. When the business took off, Scott took a step back from Amazon and focused on her literary career instead.

While she helped her husband during the day, she took night classes in fiction writing at the University of Washington.

It took her a decade, but she eventually made her dream come true and released her first novel The Testing of Luther Albright, which won the American Book Award in 2006.

The lives of Scott and Bezos changed drastically on the day of Amazon’s initial public offering in 1997 when the company’s shares were worth $2 a piece. In comparison, they are now worth over $3,000 each (after 4 separate stock splits). In 1998, Jeff Bezos reached billionaire status and, by the peak of the dotcom bubble, he had $10 billion in his net worth.

Right before the divorce from Scott, in 2018, that number had ballooned to $150 billion.

At the time of the IPO, Bezos owned 20% of Amazon. Over the years, he has sold off chunks of equity so, at the time of the divorce, he owned 16% of the company.

Amazon Shares Today

Even though Scott received a 25% cut from the Bezos family stake in Amazon following the divorce, she no longer has all the Amazon shares she had in 2019.

She offloaded around one-quarter of her stake or 65.2 million shares in 2023, worth over $10 billion.

Scott’s Philanthropy

Following her very public divorce from Bezos in 2019, MacKenzie Scott has devoted most of her time to philanthropy.

Less than two months after the divorce, Scott signed the Giving Pledge, committing to give away at least half of her wealth to charitable causes during her life.

The pledge is a charitable campaign in which the richest people in the world promise to give away the majority of their wealth.

The pledge was founded by Warren Buffett and Bill Gates and has been signed by major business names such as Ray Dalio, Robert Smith, Dustin Moskovitz, Larry Page, Michael Bloomberg, Richard Branson, Tim Cook, Larry Ellison, and many others.

Scott announced her signing the pledge on the official Giving Pledge website, stating:

In addition to whatever assets life has nurtured in me, I have a disproportionate amount of money to share. My approach to philanthropy will continue to be thoughtful. It will take time and effort and care. But I won’t wait. And I will keep at it until the safe is empty.

Scott’s charitable nature dates back long before she signed the pledge, however. She had already been donating a fortune to different causes for years and years.

In August 2020, Scott announced that she had donated $1.7 billion to 116 non-profit organizations that focus on democracy, racial equality, LGBTQ+ equality, and climate change.

By December 2020, she shared that she had made over $4.15 billion in donations in four months to 384 organizations, focusing on long-term systemic inequities and people affected by the COVID-19 pandemic.

In June 2021, Scott announced another donation of $2.7 billion to 286 organizations. Between July 2020 and July 2021, she donated $8.5 billion across 780 organizations.

As of March 2024, she has donated over $17.2 billion in charitable gifts.

While The Pledge is not legally binding, she is certainly showing the world that she is serious about the endeavor.

Here are some of Scott’s biggest donations over the years:

• March 23, 2022: $436 million donation to Habitat for Humanity and $275 million to Planned Parenthood
• May 2022: $112.6 million donation to the Big Brothers, Big Sisters Foundation
• September 2022: Donated two Beverly Hills properties worth a combined $55 million to the California Community Foundation
• October 2022: $84.5 million donation to Girl Scouts of the USA
• 2023: In March, she announced an open call for nonprofits called Yield Giving, promising that she would make $1 million in donations to 250 selected nonprofits. She donated $640 million to 361 nonprofits instead, with 279 nonprofits receiving $2 million each and the rest receiving $1 million.
• 2023: $5 million donation to the Hawaii Community Foundation for Maui wildfire recovery

MacKenzie Scott Net Worth: Authorship and Other Investments

As the ex-wife of the Amazon founder, most of Scott’s net worth comes from her stake in the company. However, she also adds to her net worth through her writing, has a significant amount invested in real estate, and is the executive director of an anti-bullying organization named Bystander Revolution, which she founded in 2014.

Literary Career

Back in 2005, Scott wrote her debut novel, The Testing of Luther Albright. She started working on this book while helping Bezos build up the company and raising her children.

In 2013, Scott published her second novel, titled Traps.

Even though she won the American Book Award for her first novel, sales of both books were modest.

Real Estate

Back in 2007, Jeff and MacKenzie Bezos spent $24 million on a property in Beverly Hills, California.

Ten years later, they expanded this property by buying the adjacent house for an additional $13 million. MacKenzie Scott received the $37 million mansion as part of the divorce settlement but donated it to the California Community Foundation in 2022, when the property was valued at $55 million.

In 2019, Scott bought a 3.2-acre waterfront property in Medina, Washington for $37.5 million, which she probably still owns today.

What Can We Learn from MacKenzie Scott’s Story?

MacKenzie Scott’s remarkable journey from her penniless youth to becoming one of the biggest philanthropists in the world showcases her extraordinary determination and her unwavering commitment to giving back to society.

Scott’s philanthropic endeavors have cemented her status as one of the most influential people in contemporary philanthropy and the world.

Despite being primarily known as the ex-wife of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, Scott has carved out her own legacy as a novelist and investor.

Following her divorce from Bezos in 2019, Scott received a substantial stake in Amazon, which at one point made her the richest woman alive.

However, it is her dedication to philanthropy that truly distinguishes her impact on the world.

Scott’s decision to sign the Giving Pledge, committing to donate the majority of her wealth to charitable causes during her lifetime, underscores a deep sense of altruism and social responsibility.

Since signing the pledge, she has consistently demonstrated a commitment to giving back, making sizeable donations to organizations focused on pressing social issues.

Scott’s remarkable wealth and philanthropic leadership serve as an inspiration to people.

Her story highlights the profound impact that empathy and social consciousness can have in addressing some of the world’s most pressing challenges.