Jeff Bezos’ ex wife MacKenzie Scott files for DIVORCE from chemistry teacher a year after marrying

Billionaire philanthropist MacKenzie Scott has filed for divorce from her second husband, science teacher Dan Jewett, in a puzzling and unexplained move.

Scott, who recently removed all mention of her husband from websites outlining her charity initiatives, filed for divorce in Washington State on Monday, according the New York Times.

Scott, who is worth an estimated $28 billion following her divorce from Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, removed husband Dan Jewett’s name and picture from her Giving Pledge profile sometime in the past week, archived versions of the website show.

In March of 2021, Scott used the same Giving Pledge site to announce her marriage to Jewett, a high school chemistry teacher from Washington state, by adding his name to her vow to donate the majority of their wealth to charity. 

Jewett’s name has also recently been edited out of a Medium post that Scott wrote last year about their giving efforts, noted the New York Times, which first reported on the quiet changes. 

The attorney who represented Scott in her 2019 divorce from Bezos declined to answer questions from the Times, and did not immediately respond to an inquiry from DailyMail.com on Wednesday afternoon. 

Though Scott is widely recognized as one of the most generous philanthropists on the planet, she maintains a low public profile, tweeting or writing on Medium only a few times a year to highlight charitable causes.

Scott, 52, and Jewett, 47, have rarely been seen together, and he quietly resigned from his teaching job at a private high school in Washington last year, saying he did not want to create a distraction there. 

The photo of Scott and Jewett that previously appeared on the Giving Pledge site, appearing to show them out hiking together, is the only publicly available image of the couple. 

As well, some of Jewett’s only known public remarks were in his letter posted on the Giving Pledge site, which has now been removed.

‘And now, in a stroke of happy coincidence, I am married to one of the most generous and kind people I know – and joining her in a commitment to pass on an enormous financial wealth to serve others,’ Jewett wrote in the now-deleted letter. 

The Giving Pledge campaign was launched in 2010 by Warren Buffett together with Bill and Melinda Gates, to encourage the world’s super-rich to give away most of their wealth to philanthropic causes. 

Since their quiet marriage last year, Scott and Jewett had also become known for donating in relative secrecy. 

Giving as individuals rather than through a foundation means the couple’s donations were known only when the recipients disclosed them, or through her occasional blog posts. 

Scott has written previously that she doesn’t respond to press inquiries in an effort not to overshadow the work of the organizations to which she donates. 

Following her divorce from Bezos after 25 years of marriage, Scott became one of the richest women in the world, with a 4 percent stake in Amazon.

Since 2020, she has donated at least $12.8 billion to charity, according to a recent tally from the Chronicle of Philanthropy.

Bloomberg’s real-time Billionaires Index ranked her as the 41st richest person in the world on Wednesday, with an estimated fortune of $27.8 billion.

At times, her generous giving has drawn negative attention to Bezos, who is worth $137 billion, over the relative paucity of his donations to charity.

However, Bezos has stepped up his giving in recent years, and has pledged to donate $10 billion through his Bezos Earth Fund, an initiative to combat climate change that has granted $1.54 billion so far, according to its website. 

Scott’s divorce from Bezos unfolded as the Amazon founder entered a new romance with former television news anchor Lauren Sánchez. 

Bezos, 58, and Sánchez, 52, continue to date, and were most recently spotted together at the premiere party for the Amazon Prime Video series The Rings Of Power. 

Sánchez, who has her own small fortune estimated at $30 million, has also dipped her toe into the world of philanthropy, announcing a $1 million gift to a group serving migrant children in July.  

She is also divorced from multimillionaire business executive Patrick Whitesell, the chairman of media agency Endeavor, which owns the UFC and Miss Universe.

Sanchez’s ex-husband Whitesell also found new love last year, when he married Australian actress Pia Miller.