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The Future of the MacKenzie Machine

mackenzie scott
Philanthropist MacKenzie Scott. Photo: Greg Doherty/Patrick McMullan via Getty Images
Theodore Schleifer
October 4, 2022

The union of MacKenzie Scott and Dan Jewett captured the world’s imagination like a fairy tale—the story of a commoner marrying tech royalty and living happily ever after, all the while bestowing their largesse on an untold number of charitable organizations and philanthropies. Incredibly, it was only three years ago that MacKenzie split from Jeff Bezos as he kindled a new romance with Lauren Sanchez. MacKenzie, meanwhile, reinvented herself post-divorce as a veritable brand name in her own right, signing The Giving Pledge as an individual, sans partner, and quickly deploying billions of dollars in donations—manna-from-heaven moneybombs, revealed biannually on Medium, that electrified the philanthropic world.

MacKenzie became even more of a public fascination when news emerged that she had quietly remarried, in 2021, to Jewett, a head-shaven science teacher at the elite Lakeside School, which the Scott-Bezos kids attended. Indeed, the feel-good story of their elopement only became public knowledge when a Wall Street Journal Amazon beat reporter was alerted to an unannounced change on The Giving Pledge’s then-spartan website.