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MacKenzie Bezos has announced she will donate half of her nearly $37bn (£29bn) fortune to charitable causes.
It comes after the announcement of her divorce with Amazon founder Jeff Bezos in February of this year, after a 25-year marriage. In April Jeff agreed to an eye-watering divorce settlement of around $35bn (£27bn), with MacKenzie keeping a 4% stake in Amazon.
The Amazon founder’s ex-wife has now signed up to the Giving Pledge, a global, multi-generational commitment by some of the world’s wealthiest individuals and couples to give more than half of their wealth to philanthropy or charitable causes, either during their lifetime or in their wills.
Bezos has previously funded cancer research through donations to the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, and Alzheimer’s research through the Diagnostics Accelerator at the Alzheimer’s Drug Discovery Foundation.
In 2013, she also founded Bystander Revolution, an anti-bullying organisation, where she serves as executive director.
Bezos’s letter to Giving Pledge read: “There are lots of resources each of us can pull from our safes to share with others — time, attention, knowledge, patience, creativity, talent, effort, humor, compassion. In addition to whatever assets life has nurtured in me, I have a disproportionate amount of money to share.
“My approach to philanthropy will continue to be thoughtful. It will take time and effort and care. But I won’t wait. And I will keep at it until the safe is empty.”
