SAN FRANCISCO – MacKenzie Scott, the ex-wife of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, said yesterday she has given US$4.2 billion (RM17 billion) to groups helping the vulnerable as the pandemic hits lives like “a wrecking ball”.
Scott, who formerly went by the name MacKenzie Bezos, last year signed a “giving pledge” to donate the bulk of her wealth to charity.
In a round of donations early this year, Scott gave nearly US$1.7 billion to groups devoted to race, gender and economic equality, as well as other social causes.
“This pandemic has been a wrecking ball in the lives of Americans already struggling,” Scott said in a post detailing her second round of giving this year.
“Economic losses and health outcomes alike have been worse for women, people of colour and people living in poverty.”
Meanwhile, she noted, the wealth of billionaires has substantially increased.
Such billionaires include her ex-husband, although Scott did not mention his name. Bezos’s wealth has reportedly grown almost 80% during the pandemic.
Scott said she enlisted a team of advisers that identified 384 organisations across the United States that support people suffering from the economic toll of the pandemic.
She added that special attention was given to organisations working to combat hunger, poverty and racial inequity in communities.
Targets for support included food banks, employment training services, legal defence funds, debt relief programmes and civil rights advocacy groups.
The groups that received donations “have dedicated their lives to helping others, working and volunteering and serving real people face-to-face at bedsides and tables, in prisons and courtrooms and classrooms, on streets and hospital wards and hotlines and frontlines of all types and sizes, day after day after day”, Scott said.
Scott was left a multi-billionaire after her divorce last year from Bezos.
She ranked 20th on a Forbes real-time list of the world’s richest people index yesterday, with a net worth of US$56 billion – after taking her latest donations into account.
Bezos was at the top of that list with a net worth of US$185 billion. – AFP, December 16, 2020
