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Good morning, Broadsheet readers! GOP Sen. Susan Collins plans to back Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson for the Supreme Court, Lizzo is launching her own shapewear brand, and MacKenzie Scott struggles to balance transparency and privacy. Have a thoughtful Thursday.
– Giving big. For the past three months, my colleague Maria Aspan and I have spent an inordinate amount of time thinking about one person: MacKenzie Scott.
The writer, first Amazon employee, and former wife of company founder Jeff Bezos has revolutionized the world of billionaire philanthropy in the past two years. Her gifts— totaling at least $12 billion allocated to more than 1,250 organizations—arrive with little warning or fanfare, and few if any restrictions on their use. Among her recipients, a significant share say the funding is by far the biggest check they’ve ever received. Case in point: the more than $560 million she donated to historically Black colleges and universities and a record $275 million donation to Planned Parenthood.
Until recently, she provided unusual transparency, publishing biannual Medium posts cataloging her philanthropy. Then, Scott’s desire for privacy won out over disclosure. Her December Medium post named no organizations, instead allowing beneficiaries to “speak for themselves.”
While Scott has since reverted to her prior transparency, as evidenced in a post earlier this month, her December pivot is illustrative of the tension at the center of her mission. Scott has at times seemed burdened by her $52 billion Amazon-funded fortune, itching to rid herself of it as quickly as possible. But does her instinct to shun the spotlight prevent her from making the kind of change to which she seems to aspire?
Maria and I dived into these questions in the April/May issue of Fortune. We spoke to more than 40 sources, from early Amazon employees to nonprofits that received donations from Scott over the past two years.
MacKenzie Scott is not your typical billionaire philanthropist. Since her divorce from Jeff Bezos, she has moved fast, given big, and shunned the spotlight.Illustration by Helen Green; Original Photo by Jorg Carstensen, Picture Alliance/Getty Images Those who knew Scott before she became one of the world’s wealthiest women recall a thoughtful, kind, and reserved person who could often be found “writing her novel in a remote office” at Amazon’s Seattle HQ. Nonprofit leaders who have interacted with Scott’s philanthropic team since 2020 describe an opaque structure that has, nonetheless, enabled some of their wildest dreams. The stamp of approval from a $12 million Scott donation, for example, helped the nonprofit Global Citizen Year find donors who matched the funding.
Scott is frequently compared to her friend Melinda French Gates, who also went through a high-profile division of one of the world’s largest fortunes. While the pair seem to have similar views on wealth and philanthropy, Scott’s net worth far exceeds French Gates’. In some ways, Scott has more in common with a different kind of billionaire. Conservative political donor Charles Koch, for instance, has long favored unrestricted philanthropic giving—albeit to a very different set of causes. Twitter and Block founder Jack Dorsey has tried his own hand at transparency via a public Google spreadsheet.
Still, it’s hard to overstate Scott’s influence when it comes to financial benevolence. As Rachel Stephenson Sheff, a philanthropic advisor to companies and high net worth individuals puts it, “She’s modeling the best practices of philanthropy within her circle of influence, but her circle of influence happens to be the entire world.”
For more on Scott’s inner debate and the impact of her enormous wealth, read our feature here. And stay tuned—while Scott’s team generally ignores all press requests, we did receive an email response from an unsigned account, promising to let us know “in case an opportunity [for an interview] arises in the future.” We’ll be sure to tell you if that day comes.
Emma Hinchliffe
[email protected]
@_emmahinchliffe
The Broadsheet is Fortune’s newsletter for and about the world’s most powerful women. Today’s edition was curated by Paige McGlauflin. Subscribe here.
A note from Fortune Fortune Brainstorm Health Live Conference May 10-11 Hear from Apple and Harvard on their groundbreaking collaborative study and how the data is being used to improve women’s health globally and build innovative products. Apply here for our early bird discount of $2,750. ALSO IN THE HEADLINES
- Bipartisan support. Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) says she will vote to confirm Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson, after meeting with the federal judge for a second time on Tuesday. Collins is the first Republican senator to announce support for Jackson’s confirmation, but it remains unclear if other GOP senators will break rank and join her. Collins was previously one of three Republican senators to confirm Jackson’s current seat on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit last June. New York Times
- Service disruptions. Military service has an outsized impact on family planning, according to a new military lifestyle survey from Blue Star Families. More than two-thirds of the 8,000 respondents surveyed reported difficulties with family-building, and over half said military service hinders the number of children they can have or the desired time between their children’s births. Women and LGBTQ service members reported challenges at twice the rate of their male, heterosexual and cisgender counterparts, citing issues with tracking ovulation, undergoing in-vitro fertilization, and taking hormone-based medication. The 19th
- True story. Women received some recognition in the BAFTA TV Craft award nominations announced Wednesday, but were absent from prime directorial categories. Actor Olivia Colman led with seven nominations for her role in true crime miniseries Landscapers, while actresses like Jodie Comer, Kate Winslet, and Aimee Lou Wood received nods. Female directors were notably absent from best factual director and best fiction director nominations, earning condemnation from the organization We Are Doc Women, which called the absence “virtue signal(ing) around diversity” in the entertainment industry.
- Off the court. The Women’s Tennis Association is partnering with San Francisco-based startup Modern Health to address mental health challenges among athletes. Under the partnership, athletes will have access to mental health coaches and therapists in Modern Health’s network, and a WTA-sponsored video series featuring testimonies from some of the top players in tennis on the importance of prioritizing mental health. Several female tennis players have recently discussed mental health challenges, including Naomi Osaka, who withdrew from the French Open last year, and Australian player Ash Barty, who announced her retirement this month at age 25. Bloomberg
MOVERS AND SHAKERS: Eurazeo managing partner and Eurazeo Brands CEO Jill Granoff and former Charles Schwab Investment Management president and CEO Marie Chandoha will join Macy’s board of directors effective April 1. Olivia Mills has joined Claravine as senior manager of people and culture. Accion Opportunity Fund has appointed Known Holdings co-founder and managing director Nathalie Molina Niño to its board of directors. The Women Sports Foundation named Scout Bassett and Jill Nash to its board of trustees.
CONTENT FROM MCKINSEY & COMPANY Where are the women who are missing from the workforce? Amid the pandemic, many working mothers downshifted their careers to care for their children full time. Reshma Saujani, founder of Girls Who Code, says now is the time to act. Saujani lays out the challenges and steps employers can take to address them in this new interview. Read here.
IN CASE YOU MISSED IT
- Everybody gonna shine. Lizzo—like Kim Kardashian before her—is jumping into the shapewear category. The "Juice" singer is collaborating with Fabletics to launch a collection called Yitty. Inspired by Lizzo’s struggle to find appealing shapewear, and named after a childhood moniker, Yitty’s collection will range in price from $14.95 to $69.95, and include sizes extra small through 6X. New York Times
- Major expansion. Fresno-based tech training hub Bitwise announced its expansion to an additional five cities: Buffalo, N.Y.; Cheyenne, Wyo.; El Paso, Texas; Greeley, Colo., and Las Cruces, N.M. Founded by Irma Olguin Jr. and Jake Soberal, Bitwise dedicates part of its operations to training individuals from underserved communities. About half of alums who find jobs in the tech industry are women or gender non-conforming individuals. Those who complete the program see an average annual salary increase of $40,000. Fortune
- Listen up. Eva Longoria is launching a series of scripted and unscripted podcasts in partnership with iHeartMedia. The partnership is an extension of iHeartMedia’s My Cultura Podcast Network, a platform dedicated to elevating Latinx voices. The first podcast scripted series, “Connections with Eva Longoria,” premieres March 31 and features conversations with makeup artist Huda Kattan, and clinical psychologist and parenting expert Dr. Shefali Tsabary. Deadline
ON MY RADAR
How an Ivy League school turned against a student New Yorker
She’s supposed to protect Americans from toxic chemicals. First, she just has to fix Trump’s mess and decades of neglect ProPublica
What we lose in the endometriosis community when the most privileged voices are loudest Rewire News Group
I overstressed my body until it shut me down BuzzFeed
PARTING WORDS
“When we arrive, we think our title and position of power will give us the opportunity to create change. Then the truth sets in: What’s being asked of us is to fit into an existing culture, not to evolve it.”
-Deepa Purushothaman, cofounder of nFormation, on the experience of women of color in the workplace.
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