MacKenzie Bezos says on the website of the charity Giving Pledge that she has “a disproportionate amount of money to share”.
The former wife of American billionaire Jeff Bezos , MacKenzie Bezos, decided to give a large part of his fortune through a charity called Giving Pledge, nearly six months after the announcement of his divorce from the founder of Amazon. In a text released Tuesday and posted on the Giving Pledge website, 49-year-old Mackenzie Bezos, currently on a divorce, says she has “a disproportionate amount of money to share.”
After spending nearly half of her life alongside Jeff Bezos, she announced in April that she would keep 25% of the shares they owned together, or 4% of Amazon’s share capital. That represented about 36 billion dollars. MacKenzie Bezos had also granted all the voting rights of the couple on Amazon to his former companion. The Giving Pledge, or “pledge of donation,” is an initiative launched in 2010 by American billionaires Warren Buffett and Bill Gates , encouraging wealthy people around the world to donate more than half of their wealth to charitable organizations, their alive or at their death.
The list of signatories visible on the Giving Pledge site – about 200 names – features the signatures of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg , investor Bill Ackman and Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen. Robert Smith, an American businessman, has also been a member since 2017. He recently made a splash by announcing the repayment of student loans from hundreds of students at Morehouse University in the United States.
The billionaire, however, unveiled in September the launch of a $ 2 billion investment fund to help homeless families and schooling poor communities. In her text, MacKenzie Bezos says she does not intend to stop there in her philanthropic projects. “It will take time, effort, and attention. But I will not wait. And I will continue until the safe is empty, “she wrote.