Jeff Bezos must have hit his head pretty hard over the weekend…or perhaps he had a Dickens-esque Christmas Carol moment.
Either way, in the past 24 hours, the Amazon founder Bezos gave away a majority of his $124 billion fortune to fight climate change and unify humanity. In addition, he awarded Dolly Parton with the Courage and Civility Award, which comes with $100 million that Dolly can donate to charities of her choice.
Woah. So maybe bullying the 1% does work after all. After years of begging Bezos to have some compassion for us lowly Amazon shoppers, did he finally hear us? Or maybe he got tired of the accusations that he was a robot with no feelings.
This is a huge milestone for one of the richest men in the world…one who infamously refrained from signing The Giving Pledge. The mega-rich - think Mark Zuckerberg and Warren Buffet - have a penchant for donating most of their money to charitable causes in their lifetime.
This may be thanks to Bezos’ girlfriend, Lauren Sánchez, who’s a journalist turned philanthropist. The pair sat down with CNN to chat about Bezos’ new “giving” persona…the first time he has ever explicitly agreed that he would donate a large sum of his money to charity.
Or maybe it’s connected to the philanthropic acts of ex-wife MacKenzie Scott. Scott - an author and committed philanthropist - signed The Giving Pledge post-divorce and has already donated half of her $24 billion net worth to charitable organizations.
Most likely, it’s because Amazon’s laying off 10,000 employees by the end of the week...but apparently, that’s neither here nor there for Bezos.
Rolling Stone
