Many business moguls have reached a point where accruing material wealth for their own aggrandizement is no longer the end goal of life. After amply providing for one’s financial needs and security of their family, and even future generations, their concerns have shifted outside their households. They become involved in their neighbors’ plight and become more socially conscious of their role in society. Many of them have fully embraced the concept of stewardship as a way of life, a practice of giving back to the less fortunate what God has blessed them with. Nothing is nobler than sharing one’s fortune to the poor and the dispossessed particularly during this Season of giving.
MacKenzie Scott is a 50-year-old former wife of Jeff Bezos, acknowledged by many as the world’s richest individual with a net worth of close to $200 billion. Scott graduated from Princeton University earning a BA degree with highest honors in 1992. Her future husband, Bezos, graduated from the same university six years earlier. It’s unlikely that they met in school but they worked together in D.E. Shaw, a hedge fund in New York. Scott served Bezos, one of the firm’s vice presidents, as his assistant. She got employed to pay the bills while she was writing her first novel. The two became a couple and they got married in 1993. The following year, the couple resigned from their jobs and decided to move to Seattle to start their own business. While Bezos was working on their future company’s business plans inside the car, Scott was on the wheels negotiating the long cross-country trip from New York to Seattle. Together, they came up with the company name, Amazon. It’s likely that Scott came up with the name, and Bezos merely concurred, since Amazon refers to a strong, warrior-like woman or a statuesque, athletic woman that Scott personifies. While Bezos was the architect for the monumental success of Amazon, no one disputes that Scott was a significant partner to the birth and early growth of the company. She helped Amazon take off out of the garage, which was Amazon’s first office. Scott managed the fledgling company’s finances and was instrumental in getting early businesses for the company. They have three sons and an adopted daughter from China. Helping out in the business and attending to the needs of their four children required full time concentration. And she was writing her first novel, which was completed only after 10 years’ work. Business observers claim that there would have been no Amazon without Scott.
They divorced in 2019 after 25 years of marriage, which saw Amazon emerged as a giant e-commerce company with a wide range of diversified businesses. Starting out as a book retailer, it has become the largest e-commerce company in the world. It is the acknowledged leader in online selling, subscription and web services. It is the top rival of some of the largest companies in the world—Walmart in retail business; Netflix, Apple and Google in subscription services; and Oracle, Microsoft, Google and Alibaba in web services. Its physical stores have occupied a huge footprint, which have crowded out Costco, Best Buy, Target and Walmart. It also owns The Washington Post and the Blue Origin, an aerospace outfit which is engaged in developing rockets for commercial use. Amazon is a well-diversified group with each line contributing heavily to its massive revenues. Last year, Amazon posted $280.5 billion in revenues and recorded $11.5 billion net profit. It was reported that Bezos transferred 1/4 of his interests in Amazon to Scott, making her one of the wealthiest individuals on the planet. Her net worth has significantly increased during the pandemic. Of this, she wrote: “This pandemic has been a wrecking ball in the lives of Americans already struggling. Economic and health outcomes alike have been worse for women, for people of color, and for people living in poverty. Meanwhile, it has substantially increased the wealth of billionaires.” By September 2020, Scott became the 22nd richest person in the world and the world’s richest woman with a net worth estimated at $62 billion. She vowed to give 50 percent of her wealth to charity. Last year, Scott signed the campaign, “Giving Pledge,” where she committed to donate most of her wealth to worthy causes and charities. Last July 2020, Scott had donated $1.7 billion to charity consisting of 116 non-profit organizations. She also gave to black universities—Howard University and Morehouse College. With the donations, she further instructed her financial advisors to distribute her wealth faster to cope with the worsening impact of the pandemic. This month before Christmas, Scott announced that she has donated another $4.15 billion to 384 organizations focusing on people directly affected by Covid-19. Overall, she has given away a total of almost $6 billion to worthy organizations and causes around the world. So far, she has given up $6 billion of her wealth. Her first novel, The Testing of Luther Albright in 2005 won her the American Book Award in 2006. Time Magazine recently named her one of the 100 Most Influential People of 2020.
Many filthy rich are to a manor born. They just live off their inherited wealth, which ordinately grows under the watch of their professional managers. They have not toiled all their lives and never experienced any hardship, which every ordinary working man, if they have any job at all, encounters everyday of his life. They are callous to the untold sufferings of the people around them. They bury their heads in the ground to mute the anguish of their impoverished fellowmen. But not McKenzie Scott. She’s the ultimate giver.