MacKenzie Scott the megadonor, the philanthropist, the author, the ex wife, the mother. There are so many ways to describe the same woman who has not only raised the benchmark of charity, she has shattered the glass ceiling with her no strings attached way of giving. It tells you that she does not wish to keep too much money for herself, that she has a very particular relationship with money, or simply too much of it, as she gives it away so often and so freely that even many of the world’s richest men together do not match the scale of her philanthropy.
But the relationship between MacKenzie and money is not as simple as it looks. Yes, she gives away money like it is free, but the same woman once struggled to earn, stay afloat, pay rent, and complete her Princeton education. It almost sounds unreal that the woman who is worth $28 billion today and has donated $26 billion since 2019 once said she worried about paying rent with the nickels she earned.
That was MacKenzie Scott from the pre Bezos era, born into privilege, growing up as a much loved daughter, studying at Hotchkiss, and just before the dawn of adulthood and her Princeton years watching her comfortable, cushy world come crashing down. The complete change in her life came almost overnight because of her father, Jason Baker Tuttle, a San Francisco based investment adviser, and his own firm, J. Baker Tuttle Corp., which went bankrupt and changed the way money existed in Scott’s life forever. For anyone who wants to understand why MacKenzie Scott is a giver through and through today, this is where the story really begins. Perhaps it stems from memories of needing money so badly for education and crumbling under that pressure that she does not wish that panic on any other child.
The 1980s, a life of comfort and Oreo stacks
Scott’s father was a wealthy investment adviser who managed client portfolios and did exceedingly well in the 1980s, with his firm paying him around $360,000 a year, almost $900,000 in today’s money. All this wealth meant fancy homes, including a residence in Pacific Heights in San Francisco and another house in Ross in Marin County. In MacKenzie’s own words, her parents were “wonderful parents who believed in education and never doubted I could be a writer,” so they sent their children to the very best private schools.
MacKenzie graduated from Hotchkiss, a very expensive Connecticut boarding school, while one brother studied at Georgetown University. Life was comfortable throughout her formative years. She was seen as a positive, brainy child who wrote her first book at six while enjoying stacks of Oreos next to her. She was focused and determined and always described as a good student, but little did she know she would have to face the harsh realities of adulthood even before turning eighteen.
The turning point and the harsh ascent of adulthood
Teenage MacKenzie, who was born into a high income financial world, witnessed her family’s financial collapse just before her seventeenth birthday. The rose tinted glasses came off, and she went from enjoying an elite lifestyle to scrambling just to stay in school. While she was still at Hotchkiss, her father’s investment firm ran into serious trouble with regulators and then into bankruptcy, and the family’s once secure financial base simply disappeared.
When she reached Princeton, Scott described arriving on campus with no choice but to work to stay in college and make ends meet.
She hustled for perhaps thirty hours a week on top of classes, taking on whatever jobs she could find. This continued throughout her time at Princeton, where at one point a loyal friend loaned her $1000 as Scott stood on the verge of dropping out in her sophomore year for lack of money. Even after graduation, in a letter to her mentor Toni Morrison, she wrote about unending burdens managed through jobs like waitressing and about worrying over paying rent with the “nickels” she earned. The girl who had grown up in Pacific Heights and Ross now knew what it meant to count coins for rent.
Dealing with difficulty-
Scott, not someone to give up, continued the grind on a daily basis, but that does not mean it did not take a toll on her. What was mentally draining and worrisome also affected her physically and emotionally. A Princeton Alumni piece throws light on her letter to Toni Morrison, where MacKenzie thanks her for “criticism and encouragement, therapy and breathing lessons.” Those few words say a lot about the weight she was carrying as she tried to write, study, and work her way through a life that had changed so abruptly. Her spirit, however, remained indomitable. She told Charlie Rose in 2013 that she arrived at Princeton knowing she would have to juggle multiple jobs and classes. Later she said those jobs were “half the education” she received and an example of bad luck turning into something she was grateful for. What felt like hardship at the time became part of the backbone of the woman who now gives money away with both hands.
A new chapter, a reshaped identity, and money given away freely-
Things only really improved once Scott jumped to D. E. Shaw, the hedge fund where she met Jeff Bezos. That move pulled her out of the world of waitressing shifts and rent panic and into a very different orbit. As for her parents, they moved to an apartment complex in Palm Beach, Florida, where units rented for about $800 a month. Her mother, Holiday, took a job in a women’s boutique on Worth Avenue, and Jason later served on the board of the condo association. The family that once lived in Pacific Heights and Marin County reset itself in a modest Florida apartment complex.
Scott did not let her relationships with them sour despite the financial difficulties she had to face, perhaps because of the sweet first seventeen years spent in comfort and security. Years later, she and Bezos even flew in for her parents’ lavish fifty-fifth wedding anniversary celebration in Florida, a sign that complicated money history did not erase family ties. After her split from Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, Scott did not go back to becoming MacKenzie Tuttle. Instead, she anchored herself to the maternal line, choosing the last name of her grandfather, G. Scott Cuming, an executive and general counsel at El Paso Natural Gas. It was a quiet but telling choice, one that signaled a woman defining herself on her own terms.
From there, the rest of the story is written in the billions she has given away. When it comes to helping children and communities around the world, especially in the field of education, Scott has done something close to unparalleled. Her philanthropy is unmatched in its scale and in its style. It feels intensely personal, as if a woman who once nearly lost her education to money now wants to make the path as smooth and as dignified as possible for everyone who comes after her.
