Billionaire philanthropist MacKenzie Scott has maintained a net worth of $33 billion despite giving away nearly $10 million every day for the past seven years.The ex-wife of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos has donated more than $26 billion through 2,700 charitable gifts since 2019. Even though his current wealth makes him one of the richest people in the world, his official Amazon author biography reflects a much more humble past. While a student, she worked low-wage jobs including dishwasher, waitress, deli cashier, nanny, and library monitor.Scott, 56, has spoken openly about his financial struggles before becoming a billionaire. While attending Princeton University, her money problems became so severe that her roommate, Jennie Ringo Tarkenton, found her crying because she could no longer afford the tuition. The situation was resolved when Tarkenton helped her get a $1,000 loan so she could remain enrolled.
Earning minimum wage was $4.25 per hour
After graduating from Princeton, where he worked as a research assistant for Nobel Prize-winning novelist Toni Morrison, Scott moved to New York City to pursue his dream of becoming a writer. To pay her rent in the early 1990s, she worked various jobs, including waitressing and making sandwiches. At the time, the federal minimum wage was $4.25 an hour, while full-time restaurant servers earned an average hourly wage of $4.80, including tips.Scott wrote a letter to Morrison. He was later profiled by Fortune and described how difficult it was to balance service jobs with his writing career.Scott wrote to his former mentor Toni Morrison, “I guess the only way to know what won’t work for me in life is to try it.”She also wrote: “I found myself with unpredictable and short periods of time, during which I would either collapse from exhaustion and despair, or contemplate the excruciating monotony of making and selling sandwiches, and be worried about how I would pay my rent with the money they gave me in return for my energies.”His life changed after he joined New York hedge fund DE Shaw, where he met Jeff Bezos (Jeff was earning about $1.5 million to $2 million annually as of today). The two married and moved to Seattle in 1994 to start Amazon, where Scott served as the company’s first accountant and administrator. Following their divorce in 2019, Scott inherited a 4 percent stake in Amazon. The continued rise in the company’s share price has helped preserve his wealth, increasing his net worth by more than $2 billion this year alone to between $33 billion and $43.8 billion, depending on market estimates, even after selling more than half of his original stake.
Scott’s philanthropy model has donated billions of dollars
Through her charitable platform, Yield Giving, launching in 2022, Scott donates an average of more than $4 billion each year. Instead of using the strict oversight common among many major donors, she offers unrestricted grants that allow organizations to decide for themselves how the money should be spent.In 2025, his unrestricted donation sent millions of dollars to educational institutions and cultural preservation groups. His largest gifts included $80 million to Howard University, $70 million to the United Negro College Fund, $50 million to Virginia State University, and $42 million to Alcorn State University. He also gave $60 million to the Center for Disaster Philanthropy and $40 million to the African American Cultural Heritage Action Fund.Many recipient organizations have praised the freedom Scott’s donations provide, but his approach has also faced criticism from some fellow tech billionaires. Gary Tan, chief executive of startup accelerator Y Combinator, publicly criticized the lack of oversight attached to the grants.“McKenzie Scott gave away $26 billion faster than anyone else in history – with no oversight, and no accountability for the chaos that followed,” Tan wrote in a post on X.He said: “This is not management. Real philanthropy requires real care and attention. Put sugar on the floor? You get ants.”Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk also agreed with Tan’s criticism, responding to the post with one word: “Yup.”Despite criticism from some of the biggest and richest people, Scott’s daily donations exceed the combined charitable donations of Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Larry Page and Larry Ellison.