WOMEN+POWER: Mackenzie Scott

Despite wanting to keep her gigantic philanthropy quiet, MacKenzie Scott’s giving keeps making a splash. 

Receiving money from MacKenzie Scott is like winning the lottery, except hardly any recipients bought a ticket. Scott, whose wealth comes from the Amazon stock she received as part of her divorce from Jeff Bezos, has developed a novel method for giving away her billions.

She and her team find organizations that are unsexy but have competent leadership—community colleges, HBCUs and other minority-serving institutions have been favorites of late—and Scott gives them a no-strings-attached sum of money often large enough to be transformative but not so large as to overwhelm them. 

So far she has given away $26 billion, and has $40 billion or so to go. Scott requires no follow up from recipients. There are zero buildings, plazas or endowed chairs named after her. She has declined to talk to the media, beyond the essay she writes each time she gives a new round of grants. In her most recent missive in December 2025, she extolled the acts of generosity that people do every day, which dwarf, she wrote, the $7.2 billion she had donated, and might have far-reaching consequences.

“It is these ripple effects,” she wrote, “that make imagining the power of any of our own acts of kindness impossible.”

Before she became one of the world’s most prolific philanthropists, MacKenzie Scott had a different ambition: to be a writer.

Scott graduated from Princeton University in 1992. During her time there, she studied creative writing under Nobel laureate Toni Morrison, who served as her senior thesis advisor and became one of the most formative influences of her life.

While Amazon, the company founded by her former husband Jeff Bezos, would go on to reshape global commerce and generate vast wealth, Scott has played an outsized role in philanthropy efforts around the world. She consistently points to her early years — and Morrison’s mentorship in particular — as the foundation for her sense of value and drive.

During the dedication of Princeton’s Morrison Hall in 2017, Scott recalled that she arrived on campus with a quiet hope of taking just one class with Morrison. Since Scott arrived at the university shortly after Morrison won the Pulitzer Prize for Beloved, she wasn’t sure how much access she would have to someone in such high demand.

“This woman was busy — there were a lot of demands on her time,” Scott said. “I honestly expected to be on my own to nurture my own interest in writing with whatever she had left to give me.”

Yet, what she found exceeded anything she had anticipated; the writer she had long admired was just as extraordinary in the classroom.

What the esteemed author modeled was balance, and it was a lesson Scott would carry with her long after leaving Princeton. “This teaching thing was a true second passion,” Scott said. “She has given me a real example of a life of passionate devotion to more than one calling.” It is a philosophy that would come to define Scott’s own approach as a writer, businesswoman, and philanthropist.

The regard was mutual. Morrison later told Vogue that Scott was “one of the best students I’ve ever had in my creative-writing classes,” praising her discipline and originality. The relationship extended beyond the classroom as well; Scott worked as Morrison’s research assistant while the Nobel laureate was writing her novel Jazz.

Morrison’s impact on Scott stretched far beyond their time together in the classroom, shaping the trajectory of her career in ways that would prove pivotal. A personal recommendation from the Nobel laureate helped Scott land a position at the hedge fund D.E. Shaw after graduation, where she would eventually meet Bezos.

Additionally, Morrison later connected Scott with her own literary agent, Amanda Urban, and wrote a blurb for the cover of Scott’s debut novel The Testing of Luther Albright. “A rarity: a sophisticated novel that breaks and swells the heart,” she wrote. The book would go on to win an American Book Award.

Over the years, Scott has woven Morrison’s legacy directly into her philanthropic work. In 2022, she directed a $3 million donation to Morrison’s alma mater, Howard University, to fund the creation of the Toni Morrison Endowed Chair in Arts and Humanities. It was a tribute to her mentor who died in 2019, the same year Scott signed the Giving Pledge.

Her commitment to the institutions Morrison championed has only grown since. Scott’s donations to historically Black colleges and universities surpassed $1 billion this year.