He and she worked in the same company, and a talented person and a beautiful woman got married soon. When she heard his brilliant dream of starting a business, she quit her job on Wall Street, gave up her dream of being a writer and drove with him across the United States, from new york to Seattle. During the long journey, she worked as a driver so that he could write a business plan and contact investors during the journey.
He became her first employee, brainstorming the company name, managing accounts, contracting freight and even delivering goods as a driver. When the company was on the track, she used to be a schoolmaster and went home to take care of the children, so that he had no worries.
Over the years, he became the richest man in the world, but he had an affair with her best friend. Before the news was made public by the media, she jointly issued a friendly divorce statement with him, and made a high-profile public photo of him and his new lover in the face of the media, having an embarrassing conversation with her, and protecting four underage children and taking care of their feelings. As for the distribution of property that everyone cares about, she got a quarter of their shares, which were worth about $35 billion at that time, and gave up the right to vote in the company's operation.
Everyone felt that she was extremely wronged, tasted humiliation and frequently felt wronged for her, but she did not become a dissatisfied wife.
He is Jeff Bezos, founder and CEO of Amazon, and the heroine is Mackenzie Scott who divorced him last year.
Maureen Callahan, a New York Post writer and editor who donated $654.38+700 million without playing the sad card, described Mackenzie's life after divorce as "dignity is the best revenge", saying that no wronged woman did better than her.
In fact, Mackenzie didn't retaliate or swear. She stopped playing sad cards and faced life with a new attitude. What she did made people applaud her. Everyone is still very concerned about her life. Most of her news is positive and there is no noise from others. Shortly after the divorce, she signed the "giving pledge" called by Bill Gates and Buffett and was willing to donate most of her property. At the end of July, she announced the progress of doing good in the face of social unrest in the United States, such as the COVID-19 epidemic, race and weakness. She has donated 654.38+07 billion dollars to help hundreds of institutions that take care of the vulnerable groups affected by the epidemic, such as ethnic minorities, gender equality, poor communities, class mobility, public health and climate change. She didn't send a press release, but tweeted that she had withdrawn her husband's surname and made some achievements in charity work, and published her own practices on the personal account of the writing platform, hoping to help American society recover and reduce the harm of recent events. Low-key and plain, won a lot of praise.
At the same time, the media's public concern about Bezos is how much he spent on buying a mansion; Tortured by Congress, did Amazon monopolize the market? His affair was exposed by his girlfriend's family for money. Even though Amazon set the best profit record in 26 years in the second quarter of this year, the reporter did not forget to criticize Amazon's operation during the epidemic, which made many consumers dissatisfied and its market share declined. To make matters worse, compared with his ex-wife who immediately took action to help the society and donated money quickly, the media criticized him for boasting before donating money, but later he made slow progress and rarely did good deeds.
Cultivating children's adventurous spirit of practicing electric drills since childhood, Mackenzie's respect stems from her sense of self-worth and attitude towards life, which is consistent with her concept of raising children. It's just that she may not have thought that this way of raising children will also turn over her life and even help more people and win more respect for her.
She's high flyers from Princeton. She works as an assistant to Toni Morrison, a Nobel Prize in Literature laureate, and is described by Morrison as the best student she has ever taught in creative writing class. Not long after graduation, she married Bezos to help start a business, so she didn't start writing in her spare time until she became a housewife. It took her eight years to finish her first novel, The Test of Luther Albright, but she immediately won the American Book Award.
Bezos once talked about his and Mackenzie's philosophy of raising children at a public meeting. They have three sons and adopted a daughter from China. The oldest child is 20 years old and the youngest is 15 years old. What they value most is whether children can stand on their own feet, whether they are willing to take risks and get in touch with new things, and whether they are resilient, because only in this way can they innovate and break through the difficulties encountered in life. Therefore, children began to practice using sharp knives at the age of 4, and began to use tools such as electric drills and chainsaws at the age of 7 or 8. Mackenzie famously said that her children would rather have only nine fingers than be foolhardy, brainless and unsolvable and unable to solve problems. In order to cultivate children's adventurous spirit, they also take their children to the kitchen to do experiments, hatch chickens, learn Chinese, follow Singapore's mathematics teaching method, and engage in various sports and clubs.
This philosophy is also reflected in her wealth view and style of doing good. She has never shown off her wealth and displayed exquisite clothes and jewels in the news, and she doesn't like to be a "celebrity" at cocktail parties because she is uneasy about those superficial conversations. Regarding her wealth, she said in a recent article about public donations that she never doubted that wealth was the result of social collective creation, but in the social structure, some people saw opportunities, but more people encountered difficulties. The reason why she wants to make public the progress of her donation is just to find out that people pay a little attention to her, so she can call on more institutions and * * * to bring more changes together.
When choosing a donation institution to help the disadvantaged groups, she deliberately chose the units dominated by the disadvantaged groups, such as anti-racial discrimination organizations led by blacks and gender equality groups led by women. Because they have experienced setbacks and recovery, they know how to stand on their own feet, they can bear the pain of others best, and they know how to help the recipients.
She also dares to try and create new ways to donate to the rich. Brian Mittendorf, a professor of charity finance at Ohio State University, analyzed that before doing good deeds, many rich people would explain in a big way how much they would spend to set up a new institution or foundation, what kind of good deeds they would do, and talk about their own ideas to make a name for themselves, but subsequent actions might not have the same positive impact. But Mackenzie did the opposite. She didn't announce what topics she was concerned about first, but silently donated before the release list of personal accounts, fully respecting what these units were doing and not interfering. This is the only way to really help society.
Mackenzie married Bezos at the age of 23, and after leaving the campus, she gave and experienced almost everything. The frustration caused by her husband's affair and marital changes is unimaginable to outsiders. But she faced it with self-reliance, perseverance and adventure. She not only broke through her comfort zone, but also broke through her new life. She also enables these institutions and people from disadvantaged backgrounds to break through their own difficulties, stand on their own feet, help others and help more people in need.