MacKenzie Scott

Early life

MacKenzie Scott Tuttle was born on April 7, 1970, in San Francisco, California. She grew up with a passion for storytelling and wrote her first full-length book at age six. As a teenager, she attended Hotchkiss High School in Connecticut. She later enrolled in creative writing studies at Princeton University, where Toni Morrison was her instructor. Morrison praised her talent and called her one of her star students. Scott graduated with an English degree in 1992.

Career

After finishing college, Scott balanced her writing pursuits with a job at a New York hedge fund called D. E. Shaw. She worked under the management of Jeff Bezos, whom she married in 1993. They packed up and moved to Seattle in 1994 to start an online bookstore. That small setup eventually became Amazon. Scott helped set up everything in the beginning, including the business plan, account management, and product shipping.

As Amazon grew, Scott stepped back from the business to focus on her family and her writing career. She spent nearly ten years working on her debut novel, The Testing of Luther Albright, which hit shelves in 2005. Her book received international praise from critics and earned a major literary award. She published her second book, Traps, in 2013. She founded the Bystander Revolution the following year to help kids stand up against bullying. 

Scott and Bezos divorced in 2019. From then on, she focused on large-scale charitable donations. She pledged to give away more than 50% of her money over her lifetime. She donates billions directly to groups tackling poverty, healthcare access, and equality. Her team skips the long application hoops, giving non-profits complete freedom to spend the money as needed. As of 2025, her total giving topped $26 billion. 

Net Worth

According to Forbes, MacKenzie Scott’s estimated net worth is $32.2 billion USD, as of September 2026.