MacKenzie Scott, formerly known as MacKenzie Bezos, is a $30 billion American novelist, philanthropist, and activist. Her fortune would be considerably larger, but she donated $6 billion to charity in 2020 alone.
She intends to contribute the vast majority of her fortune throughout her lifetime and has already given more than $14 billion to hundreds of charities around the world as of this writing. More on her altruism can be found later in this article.
Who is MacKenzie Scott?
MacKenzie Scott Tuttle was born in April 1970 in San Francisco, California. She grew up in Marin County, just across the Golden Gate Bridge. Her family also lived in the Pacific Heights district of San Francisco. Jason Baker Tuttle, her father, owned a financial investment firm.
MacKenzie attended the Hotchkiss School in Lakeville, Connecticut, for high school. Her parents declared bankruptcy during her junior year after her father was the focus of a Securities and Exchange Commission investigation. Her parents relocated to Florida, where her father failed in his attempt to launch a new financial profession. Her father was ultimately barred from establishing a new financial enterprise. In his decision, the Florida judge cited the family’s previous extravagant expenditures.
MacKenzie went to Princeton University after high school to study English. She received her diploma in 1992. In a creative writing workshop at Princeton, she studied under renowned novelist Toni Morrison. MacKenzie was later described by Morrison as “one of the best students I’ve ever had.”
How old is MacKenzie Scott?
She is currently 53 years old.
What is MacKenzie Scott’s net worth?
The American novelist is estimated to be worth $30 Billion.
What is MacKenzie Scott’s career?
MacKenzie moved to New York after graduating from Princeton with the ambition of becoming a novelist. She accepted a job as an administrative assistant at the hedge fund D.E. Shaw to supplement her income till her dream came true.
Jeff Bezos, a fellow Princeton alum and business Senior Vice President, was one of many she aided in this role. Their offices were connected by a wall. She finally advanced to the position of research associate directly under Bezos. Jeff and MacKenzie met in 1992 and dated for three months before getting married. In 1993, they married. He was 29 and she was 23.
Jeff became captivated with the newly formed “World Wide Web” around the time of their marriage. According to mythology, Jeff saw that an online “e-commerce” business could be profitable, so he chose an online bookstore because books don’t go bad and don’t need to be tried on or even handled before purchase.
MacKenzie was instrumental in pushing Jeff to pursue his dreams. In 1994, they decided to leave their comfortable professions and homes in New York and relocate to Seattle so he could follow his internet dreams. MacKenzie drove the Volvo across the country, with Jeff spitballing ideas and composing his e-commerce business plan on a laptop in the passenger seat.
Jeff and MacKenzie devised a list of dozens of online-saleable products. Jeff eventually landed on books. He initially called his company Cadabra. He later settled on the name Amazon, which refers to the Amazon River in South America.
On July 5, 1994, Amazon was formed in their Seattle garage. Jeff got started with a $300,000 angel investment from his parents. MacKenzie worked as Amazon’s secretary and bookkeeper.
During this time, she also attended night classes in fiction writing at the University of Washington. It took another decade, before MacKenzie’s fictional work “The Testing of Luther Albright” was finally published. According to reports, the book sold fewer than 2,000 copies. In 2013, she published her second novel, titled “Traps.”
Amazon launched its initial public offering on May 15, 1997. Amazon finished its first day of trading at $2 per share after correcting for stock splits. A single share of Amazon is now worth more than $3,000.If you had invested $10,000 in Amazon at the time of its IPO, you would now have more than $15 million.
Jeff controlled 20% of Amazon at the time of its IPO. He repeatedly sold off chunks of equity to create liquidity throughout the years. Jeff’s share sales have earned $70 billion in liquid cash as of this writing. He owned 16% of Amazon prior to their divorce settlement.
Jeff became a billionaire for the first time in June 1998. He was valued at $10 billion at the height of the dot-com bubble. His net worth fell back to $2 billion after the bubble broke.
His net worth surpassed $50 billion for the first time in June 2015. It surpassed $100 billion for the first time in January 2018. It surpassed $150 billion in July 2018. His net worth has ranged between $150 and $200 billion in recent years.
Amazon shares momentarily broke the $3,300 barrier on July 13, 2020. MacKenzie’s net worth would be the highest in the world at any price above $3,255. So, on July 13, 2020, MacKenzie Bezos officially became the world’s richest woman for the first time.
