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Billionaire philanthropist MacKenzie Scott ties knot with science teacher

WION Web Team
California, United StatesUpdated: Mar 08, 2021, 08:11 PM IST
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MacKenzie Scott and Dan Jewett Photograph:(Twitter)

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The marriage to Dan Jewett, a Seattle science teacher, was mentioned in a post on the website for the philanthropic organization The Giving Pledge, in which Jewett said he would be signing on to Scott's commitment to give away most of her wealth

MacKenzie Scott, the billionaire philanthropist and the former wife of Amazon.com Inc founder Jeff Bezos, has remarried.

The marriage to Dan Jewett, a Seattle science teacher, was mentioned in a post on the website for the philanthropic organization The Giving Pledge, in which Jewett said he would be signing on to Scott's commitment to give away most of her wealth.

Scott is the world's 22nd-richest person worth some $53 billion, according to Forbes. Her 2019 divorce from Bezos after 25 years of marriage left her with a 4% stake in Amazon.

The 50-year-old unlocked a staggering sum of nearly $6 billion in charitable gifts last year, and unlike many other large donors did not attach any restrictions or even naming rights requirements.

That followed donations of $1.7 billion last year to causes including racial equality, LGBTQ rights, public health and climate change.

She enlisted a team of advisors to help identify organizations to aid those suffering from the economic toll of the pandemic, focusing on those working to combat hunger, poverty and racial inequity.

While her ex-husband Bezos has donated $10 billion to fight climate change, the largest charitable gift of 2020 and additional amounts to other causes, his giving has been slower and proportionately smaller, given that his fortune is worth more than three times hers.

The former couple could offer a major boost to philanthropy in the US, which represented some $450 billion in donations from Americans in 2019.

The approach has shaken up the philanthropic world, not only with the size of her gifts, but without the limits and accounting requirements of many large foundations or donors.

"I join with the kindest and most thoughtful person I know in making this pledge, grateful for the exceptional privilege it will be to partner in giving away assets with the potential to do so much good when shared," Jewett said in the post.

The Giving Pledge campaign was set up in 2010 by US business tycoon Warren Buffett together with by Microsoft Corp co-founder Bill Gates and his wife Melinda to encourage the world's super-rich to give away most of their wealth to philanthropic causes.