MacKenzie Scott’s close relationship with Toni Morrison long before Amazon put her on the path give more than $1 billion to HBCUs

Before MacKenzie Scott published her first novel or helped shape Amazon in its early days as an online book seller, she found mentorship and guidance from one of America’s most acclaimed writers.

Scott credits author and Nobel laureate Toni Morrison not only with shaping her writing, but in helping her find her footing early in her career. Morrison, who was Scott’s creative writing professor at Princeton University, put Scott on a path to publish her first novel and get one of her first jobs out of school, where she met now ex-husband Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon.

“This writer that I admired so much also turned out to be such a gifted and devoted teacher,” Scott said of Morrison in a 2017 Princeton University interview. “She has given me a real example of a life of passionate devotion to more than one calling.”

Scott has certainly had multiple callings. In addition to being a novelist and early contributor to Amazon, Scott, worth more than $39 billion, is a prominent philanthropist. In 2025 alone, she donated $7.2 billion to nonprofits, and has given away more than $26 billion since 2019. She’s a signatory of the Giving Pledge, devoted to giving away the majority of her wealth during her lifetime.

More than $700 million of Scott’s donations last year went to historically Black colleges and universities, at a time when tech leaders like Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg have pulled back from funding DEI initiatives. With about $500 million given to HBCUs in 2020, Scott’s contributions to Black higher-ed institutions total more than $1.2 billion. These grants are unrestricted, meaning universities can do with the money as they see fit.

Some of Scott’s contributions have resulted in homages to her old mentor, who died in 2019: In February 2022, Howard University announced the creation of the Toni Morrison Endowed Chair in Arts and Humanities position using Scott’s $3 million donation to the college.

What was Toni Morrison’s influence on MacKenzie Scott?

Scott and Morrison, having met more than 30 years ago at Princeton, worked together closely, with Morrison serving as Scott’s senior thesis advisor. The author called Scott “one of the best students I’ve ever had in my creative-writing classes . . . really one of the best.”

“She was an amazingly supportive teacher, really good at bringing out the best and guiding you through that [writing] process and very supportive after I left school too,” Scott told American talk show host Charlie Rose in a 2013 interview.

The two kept in touch in the years following Scott’s 1992 graduation. Morrison was instrumental in helping the philanthropist publish her first book, introducing Scott to her agent Amanda Urban. When Scott published her debut novel, The Testing of Luther Albright, in 2005, Morrison wrote a blurb for the cover of the book.

In letters to Morrison, excerpted by The New York Times, Scott shared her struggles as a recent graduate, waitressing in New York.

“I guess the only way I will find out what will not work for me in life is by trying it,” she wrote. “I found myself with unpredictable and small chunks of time during which I either collapsed from exhaustion and frustration, or ruminated over the excruciating monotony of making and selling sandwiches, and worried about how I might pay my rent with the nickels they gave me in exchange for my ennui.”

During that time, Scott’s Princeton roommate loaned her $1,000 to deep her from dropping out her sophomore year, an action Scott would later say would influence her philanthropy.

She soon got an opportunity to work at the hedge fund D.E. Shaw, and was interviewed for the position she would get by Bezos, who would sit in the office adjacent to her at the firm. The two would leave the firm in 1994 after getting married the year before, with Bezos founding Amazon in the garage of their Bellevue, Wash., home.

In another letter to Morrison shortly after she took the position at D.E. Shaw, Scott said she got the job “based largely on a transcript of your phone recommendation.”

A version of this story was published on Fortune.com on Dec. 28, 2025.

More on MacKenzie Scott and philanthropy:

• MacKenzie Scott’s historic $20 million donation to a community college is now mired in controversy amid ongoing investigation
• MacKenzie Scott’s $19 billion donations have turned philanthropy on its head—why her style of giving actually works
• Billionaire philanthropy’s growing divide: Mark Zuckerberg stops funding immigration reform as MacKenzie Scott doubles down on DEI

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com