Scott was her grandfather. Smith was hoping that the panellists would consider how Penns F.G.L.I. Morrison denied that she had ever hit her daughter, whom she described as emotional and intense. At Mackenzies request, Penn had not listed her contact information in its online directory. Morrisons trial was held during the spring of Mackenzies junior year. The acclaimed novelist Toni Morrison was Ms. Scotts mentor at Princeton University. In college, a loan from a friend helped keep her from dropping out. Mr. Bezos later said he would find her writing in hotel bathrooms when he woke up on vacation. She was working multiple jobs, and she owned almost no personal or material items, she said. It was a pretty emotional conversation, because of her fear that, if she did get the scholarship, there would be press, and her bio family could find her and tear her down, Cannon said. And ultimately you say it was your mother. An ambulance was called, and Mackenzie was taken to Mercy Hospital, in St.Louis, and admitted into the pediatric intensive-care unit. Waitressing was hard, and something was not clicking yet with her goal of writing a novel. It can also be read as a summary of her philosophy. But as Ms. Scotts fame for giving away money has grown, so, too, has the deluge of appeals for gifts from strangers and old friends alike. She is just so amazing at getting people to think, feel, and do what she wants, she wrote. Death: December 31, 2008 (80) Immediate Family: Son of John Morrison and Catriona Morrison. (A hotline caseworker had notified the police.) The fathers message was shared with Penns general counsel, Wendy White, who asked to be put in touch with Mackenzies mother. In keeping with the absolute secrecy surrounding Lost Horses operations, there is no nameplate in the lobby and the slim rectangular window on the Lost Horse floor is papered over. Her foster parents had had a baby, and Mackenzie felt increasingly peripheral to their lives. Who Is Mackenzie Fierceton? She sent the Rhodes Trust medical and family-court records, along with letters from twenty-six people in her life. She broke me. She concluded, I was never broken. She interviewed Drivers classmates about what had happened to him, and she and another student, Kate Schneider, took photographs of the buildings entryways. He edited what was my first and, happily, last piece of financial marketing literature, and after our wedding I started working full time on a novel, she wrote to Ms. Morrison of that period. Mackenzie Fierceton was championed as a former foster youth who had overcome an abusive childhood and won a prestigious Rhodes Scholarship. When I founded Penn First, it was for students just like her, and her membership and leadership in the club was welcomed with open arms, she explained. They dated for three months before getting engaged and were married three months after that. When Mackenzie initially contemplated applying for the Rhodes Scholarship, she asked Moore and Damianos, the recent Rhodes Scholars, if they thought it would be a problem that she was involved in a wrongful-death lawsuit that a family had filed against Penn. Ms. Scott is friendly with Ms. French Gates, people in philanthropic circles in Seattle say, and the two billionaires have worked together on programs like the Equality Cant Wait Challenge, a $40 million gender-equality initiative. Ms. Scott with Jeff Bezos, her husband from 1993 to 2019. A month after the trial, the judge concluded, While it is possible that Petitioner was the cause of the alleged injuries, the court cannot make that finding by a preponderance of the evidence based on the evidence presented. The judge ordered that Morrisons name be struck from the state registry. She gave with few strings attached. The New Yorker may earn a portion of sales from products that are purchased through our site as part of our Affiliate Partnerships with retailers. Meet Mother Father and Radiologist Parents Mackenzie Fiercetons mother works as a radiologist and was raised in an upper-middle-class family. Mackenzie is making this all up. That clamor may have driven Ms. Scotts already discreet operation further underground, with recent philanthropic announcements akin to sudden lightning bolts for unsuspecting recipients. Dr. Morrison was arrested at the time but the case was dropped by prosecutors who said they could never prove Mackenzies claims. Although all criminal charges against Morrison had been dropped, the D.S.S., which has its own procedures for assessing guilt, substantiated Mackenzies allegations. Mackenzie Morrison, 31, says she felt drawn to Korzen the moment they first met at a charity event. An article in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch announced that Morrison had been charged with felony child abuse and misdemeanor assault, running a picture of her wearing a pearl necklace and a white lab coat, with a breast-cancer-awareness ribbon pinned to her chest. But, she wrote, if I truly cant do this, where am I supposed to return to?, Holiday breaks were a source of panic. (Her doctors said that her head injuries in high school may have put her at greater risk for the disorder.) Some were groups that her mother might have gone to a luncheon for in Palm Beach, or her grandmother in El Paso. These stories attract attention, in part because they offer comfort that, at least on occasion, such things happen. But the outline of the story is this: Mackenzie was raised in a wealthy St. Louis suburb by a single mother who was repeatedly abusive, according to two state Sherry McLain, a nurse assigned to her, told me, She had two black eyes, and her hair was full of blood. They were talking about work and school and whatever else and having a great time just like they were old friends, Mackenzie wrote. Instead, The New York Times relied on interviews with more than two dozen friends, teachers, former colleagues and acquaintances from every chapter of her life, as well as public records and the rare interviews Ms. Scott has given, generally in conjunction with the publication of one of her novels. And Ms. Scott changed her author bio on the Amazon website to read: She lives in Seattle with her four children and her husband, Dan. Mr. Jewetts Twitter page abruptly vanished, leaving behind ghostly traces of an account where colleagues had bantered with him about science. She gave overwhelmingly to groups led by women, people of color, members of the L.G.B.T.Q. Knowing that Penn had already spoken with Morrison, they asked her for a meeting, too. She said, You know meI would never hurt my beautiful girl. When Mackenzie returned to school, she learned that her mother had hired William Margulis, who had sent four children to Whitfield and later served on the schools board of trustees, as her defense attorney. They are the people that support you, look out for you, & love you unconditionally. She went on, By those standards, the standards of real family, not one person Im related to by blood meets those requirements or even comes close., Still, she was sometimes hopeful that the kind face her mother presented could actually be real. She worked on a toy drive for the children of farmworkers and on fund-raisers for breast cancer. Mackenzies parents had separated when she was six, and Mackenzie lived with her mother, Carrie Morrison, the director of breast imaging and mammography at In an evaluation for QuestBridge, Mackenzies history teacher wrote that Mackenzie, after escaping her wealthy but abusive parent, was on her own in every way., Mackenzie explained in a biographical essay that her private school was among the most lite in St. Louis. For some nonprofits, curiosity has curdled into fear, as leaders fret that when their peers receive grants from Ms. Scott and they are passed over, it could imply that they are mismanaged or ineffective. I am not a natural for big groups because I am such an introvert, she told the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. The Hotchkiss School, the Connecticut boarding school Ms. Scott attended. Korzen was magnetic a master storyteller who could make a roomful of people laugh. (A former classmate had also sent an anonymous e-mail to Penns news office.) Her first big statement as a newly single woman came less than five months later on the website of the Giving Pledge, started by Bill Gates, Melinda French Gates and Warren Buffett as a place where billionaires promised to give away at least half their wealth. The administrative ruling was first reported by Medium Marker. Mackenzie had been invited to a pre-orientation program for first-generation and/or low-income (F.G.L.I.) students, and, though she didnt attend the program, she began going to events hosted by Penn First, an F.G.L.I. chapters, groups that were doing a lot of good on the front lines during the pandemic but not the kind of innovation-focused giving that the Silicon Valley set prioritizes. Critics complained that she had retreated into less transparency rather than share more information, as nonprofit governance experts had called for. Mackenzie told me, I wish I had taken more time to precisely describe the nuances of their livesit was a simplification of a complex story., A letter of endorsement from Penn, signed by Beth Winkelstein, the deputy provost, said that Mackenzie understands what it is like to be an at-risk youth, and she is determined to re-make the systems that block rather than facilitate success., The sixteen-year tenure of Penns president, Amy Gutmann, had been defined by her efforts to position Penn as a school that addressed inequality rather than perpetuating ita pivot that many lite universities have attempted. . Winkelstein asked what happened the night before she was hospitalized. It says that your hair is caked with dried blood. That didnt happen, did it?. The chosen charities were told they could not announce the gifts until the donor did. And then you just throw away the real memory, the true one, and replace it with the one that they have fed you a million times, until that is the only thing you can remember.. She wrote to the dean of the social-work school with a list of concerns, including the appearance of retaliation against Mackenzie for giving a deposition in wrongful death lawsuit against the University. (The university has denied that its dealings with Mackenzie had anything to do with the lawsuit. Soon, representatives from Lost Horse were calling nonprofits around the country about multimillion-dollar donations from an anonymous giver. That power deserves civic scrutiny and attention.. However, an anonymous father reported that she belonged to a rich family and an investigation was put upon her. Our greatest desire is that Mackenzie chooses to live a happy, healthy, honest, and productive life, using her extraordinary gifts for the highest good. 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