Mackenzie Scott Net Worth

Early Life

MacKenzie Scott Tuttle was born in San Francisco, California, in April 1970. She grew up across the Golden Gate Bridge in Marin County. Her family also had a home in San Francisco’s Pacific Heights neighborhood. Her father, Jason Baker Tuttle, ran a financial investment company. For high school, MacKenzie attended the Hotchkiss School in Lakeville, Connecticut. During her junior year, her parents filed for bankruptcy after her father became the subject of a Securities and Exchange Commission probe. Her parents moved to Florida, where her father unsuccessfully attempted to jump-start a new financial career. Her father was eventually barred from launching a new financial firm. The Florida judge pointed to the family’s previous lavish spending in the rejection. After high school, MacKenzie attended Princeton University, where she studied English. She graduated in 1992. While at Princeton, she studied under famed author Toni Morrison in a creative writing class. Morrison would later describe MacKenzie as “one of the best students I’ve ever had.”

Meeting Jeff Bezos

After graduating from Princeton, MacKenzie moved to New York with the dream of becoming a novelist. To supplement her lifestyle until that dream came true, she got a job at the hedge fund D.E. Shaw as an administrative assistant. One of the people she assisted in this capacity was company Senior Vice President and fellow Princeton alum Jeff Bezos. Their offices shared a wall. She eventually graduated to working as a research associate directly under Bezos. Jeff and MacKenzie met in 1992 and dated for just three months before becoming engaged. They married in 1993. She was 23, he was 29. Around the time of their marriage, Jeff became fascinated with the newly forming “World Wide Web.” According to legend, Jeff knew an online “e-commerce” store could be successful, and he settled on an online bookstore because books don’t go bad and don’t need to be tried on or even touched before purchase. MacKenzie was critical in encouraging Jeff to pursue his ambitions. In 1994 they mutually decided to quit their cozy jobs and lives in NYC and move to Seattle so he could pursue his internet dreams. MacKenzie drove the Volvo as they crossed the United States, with Jeff in the passenger seat spitballing ideas and writing his e-commerce business plan on a laptop. Jeff and MacKenzie brainstormed a list of dozens of products that could be sold online. Eventually, Jeff settled on books. During this time she also took night classes at the University of Washington in fiction writing. It took another decade, but MacKenzie did eventually release her own fictional novel titled “The Testing of Luther Albright”. The book reportedly sold fewer than 2,000 copies. In 2013, she released a second book, this one was titled “Traps.”

Becoming Billionaires

Jeff first hit billionaire status in June 1998. At the peak of the dot-com bubble, he was worth $10 billion. After the bubble burst, his net worth retreated back to $2 billion. In June 2015, his net worth hit $50 billion for the first time. In January 2018, it topped $100 billion for the first time. In July 2018, it topped $150 billion. In recent years, his net worth has fluctuated between $150 and $200 billion.

MacKenzie Bezos Divorce Settlement

On January 9, 2019, Jeff and MacKenzie Bezos announced that they were divorcing after 25 years of marriage. As we stated previously, they married in 1993, one year BEFORE Jeff founded the company that would one day make him the richest person on the planet. At the time of their divorce announcement, Jeff had a net worth of $136 billion. By all accounts, MacKenzie could have been entitled to half of all of Jeff’s assets since they were all acquired during their marriage. If that was true, MacKenzie could have been given as much as $70 billion worth of stock and various other assets.

Final Settlement

Richest Woman In The World

Heading into 2020, MacKenzie was the fifth richest woman in the world. Here’s a list of the richest women in the world as of January 1, 2020:

#1: Francoise Bettencourt-Meyers – $62 billion (L’Oreal heiress) #2: Julia Flesher Koch – $60 billion (David Koch’s widow – Koch oil) #3: Alice Walton – $53 billion (Walmart founder Sam Walton’s daughter) #4: Jacqueline Mars – $42 billion (Mars candy) #5: MacKenzie Bezos – $37 billion

As it turned out, 2020 was a very fortunate year for Jeff and MacKenzie Bezos. After the market closed on August 26, 2020, here’s how that very same list stacked up:

#1: MacKenzie Bezos – $67 billion #2: Francoise Bettencourt-Meyers – $66 billion #3: Alice Walton – $56 billion #4: Julia Flesher Koch – $52 billion #5: Jacqueline Mars – $37 billion

Philanthropy

On July 28, 2020, MacKenzie posted an article to the blogging platform Medium in which she made two major announcements: #1) That she was formally changing her name from MacKenzie Bezos to MacKenzie Scott. “Scott” is not her maiden first name; it’s her maiden middle name, and it comes from one of her grandfathers. #2) The second announcement was that MacKenzie had donated $1.7 billion to 116 charities. Just a few months later, on December 15, 2020, MacKenzie announced she had donated $4.2 billion to 384 organizations. MacKenzie stated that her intention is: “To give the majority of my wealth back to society that helped generate it, to do it thoughtfully, to get started soon, and to keep at it until the safe is empty.” – MacKenzie Scott By the middle of 2022, she had given away $12 billion. In December 2022, Scott posted a database with her gifts on a website called Yield Giving. As of June 2023, Yield Giving had donated more than $14 billion to over 1,600 non-profit teams.

Second Marriage

In March 2021 MacKenzie revealed she had recently married a high school science teacher named Dan Jewett. Dan teaches at the exclusive Lakeside School, which counts Bill Gates and Paul Allen as alumni. In September 2022, a King County, Washington court filing showed that MacKenzie had filed for divorce from Dan. The divorce was finalized in January 2023.

Real Estate

In 2007, Jeff and MacKenzie paid $24 million for a home in Beverly Hills, California. In 2017 they paid $13 million for the property immediately next door for a total combined $37 million. MacKenzie received this house as part of their divorce settlement. In August 2022, a charity called the California Community Foundation announced that MacKenzie had donated the home to the organization. At the time of the donation, the home’s estimated value was $55 million, according to the foundation. In 2021, MacKenzie donated $20 million to the organization. In 2019, MacKenzie paid $37.5 million for a 3.2-acre waterfront property in Medina, Washington.