Billionaire philanthropist MacKenzie Scott remarried after his high-profile divorce from Amazon founder Jeff Bezos.
In a letter posted on the website of the non-profit organization Giving Pledge on Saturday, Dan Jewett, a science teacher at the prestigious Seattle school attended by his children, said he was “grateful for the exceptional privilege of being a partner in donating assets with potential to do so much good when shared. “
What could be a personal and totally private decision takes on unusual significance in light of the resources available to Scott – $ 53 billion according to Forbes’ most recent estimate – and his stated intention to donate most.
In addition to the note on the Giving Pledge website, Ms. Scott, a published novelist, changed her author page on the Amazon website to read: “She lives in Seattle with her four children and her husband, Dan”.
Giving Pledge was started by software magnate Bill Gates, his wife, Melinda, and billionaire investor Warren Buffett in 2010. The signatories agree to donate most of their wealth.
For Mrs. Scott, her remarriage is the latest turnaround in a life where she is calm but firmly set the limits of her own privacy. Rather than remain anonymous in her donations, she chose to advertise nearly $ 6 billion in donations and gifts last year in two posts on the Medium website.
“I have called this discrete transparency. It’s basically transparency, but entirely on donor terms, ”said Benjamin Soskis, senior associate researcher at the Center for Nonprofits and Philanthropy at the Urban Institute. “This gives a simulacrum of transparency, but it is still totally discretionary.”
Mrs. Scott holds a unique place in the world of megaphilanthropy. She doesn’t have the decades of experience that Gates or former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg has amassed. But through the speed and scale of her donations, and the way she gave her gifts with few of the highly restrictive conditions and costly reporting requirements that have become commonplace, Ms. Scott was able to help shift the debate over the direction of the field.
She has given extensively to YMCA and YWCA chapters across the country, to food banks and historically black colleges and universities. She made donations to organizations that support women’s rights, LGBTQ equality and efforts to combat climate change and racial inequalities.
Their influence was evident in a report released jointly last week by the Candid groups and the Center for Disaster Philanthropy. The groups found that $ 4 billion of the $ 6 billion that Scott donated last year could be considered a response to the pandemic, which accounted for nearly three-quarters of Covid-19-related donations by billionaires and other high-net worth individuals.
“It made a big impact,” said Grace Sato, director of research at Candid. “The way she did it rocked the trends in what we were seeing.”
The Wall Street Journal first reported on Mrs Scott’s remarriage.
Mrs. Scott has been married to Mr. Bezos for 25 years. They divorced in 2019 and their stake in the divorce settlement was 4 percent of Amazon’s shares. While her ex-husband became a mainstay of the tabloids after the divorce, going out on super yachts with other tycoons and celebrities, Scott stayed out of the spotlight.
In a statement, Mr. Bezos said, “Dan is such a nice guy and I am happy and excited for both.”
It is not clear when Mrs. Scott and Mr. Jewett were married. She did not comment on him in any publicity about his offers last year. Its representatives did not respond to requests for comment.
“In a stroke of happy coincidence,” wrote Mr. Jewett in his letter posted on the Giving Pledge page, “I am married to one of the most generous and kind people I know – and I join her in her commitment to spend enormous financial wealth to serve others. “
“I don’t think it’s surprising to me that she added her husband,” said Debra Mesch, a professor at the Institute of Female Philanthropy at Indiana University. “She is saying, ‘Now we are a couple and the donations from our home are going to be together.’ This is what many couples do. “
Describing himself as “a teacher for most of my life,” Mr. Jewett noted the strangeness of a statement of his intentions to bestow, “since I never sought to gather the kind of wealth necessary to feel like saying such a thing. would have particular significance. ” Mr. Jewett teaches at Lakeside School, which has Mr. Gates among his outstanding alumni.
Mr. Soskis, of the Urban Institute, said that in the past the events that shaped donation decisions tended to come late in life, focusing on retirement and death in the form of bequests. The main philanthropists are now much younger, raising a new set of questions. Priscilla Chan and her husband, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, cited the birth of their daughter as a motivating factor for her donation.
“The fact that giving is happening now at the height of life means that giving decisions and narratives are being shaped by different events in the life cycle, like divorce, marriage and birth in a way that was not really the case 30 or 40 years ago ”Said Soskis.
Jack Beggcontributed research.