MacKenzie Bezos became the world’s 22nd richest person thanks to her divorce settlement from Amazon founder Jeff Bezos. She has recently signed the “Giving Pledge” which means that she has promised to give away at least half of her €33 billion fortune to good causes. MacKenzie, who married Jeff Bezos in 1993 – a year before he started Amazon from his garage in Seattle (US) – said that she had “a disproportionate amount of money to share” and promised to work hard at giving it away to help people.

The Giving Pledge is a philanthropic initiative created by the investor Warren Buffett and Microsoft founder Bill Gates, to encourage the world’s richest people to commit to giving away at least half their wealth to charity. Ms Bezos joined 19 other new pledge signatories including Brian Acton, co-founder of WhatsApp, and Paul Sciarra, co-founder of Pinterest. This takes the total number of signatories to 203 from 23 countries. Those previously signed up include Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, Easy Jet’s Stelios Haji-Ioannou, Richard Branson and Tesla’s Elon Musk. Jeff Bezos, the world’s richest person with a fortune estimated at €150 billion, has not signed the Giving Pledge, but he congratulated his former wife saying, “MacKenzie is going to be amazing, thoughtful and effective at philanthropy, and I’m proud of her.”