Her room, on the third floor, was mostly bare, though she had hung seventeen photographs, mostly of college friends. Her college counsellor recommended that she apply to universities through a nonprofit, called QuestBridge, that matches exceptional students facing financial challenges with schools that will fully fund their tuition. Amazon was Mr. Bezos dream, and Ms. Scott did not give up on her own dream of writing novels. He is the son of the late boxer, Tommy Morrison. She lies better than I can tell the truth.. The private Ms. Scott was founder and executive director but appeared to prefer not to serve as the face of the organization, instead letting the stars take center stage. Scott was her grandfather. A man who appeared to be a security guard at an address linked to another shell company in an affluent corner of Seattle said, Theyre not available at the moment.. With Moores permission, her story was put on fund-raising material sent to alumni, and Gutmann summarized Moores life story in a commencement address. That same year, her mother made headlines in the local papers fighting to save neighborhood trees threatened by Dutch elm disease. Like the child riffling through the botany book for plant species, she reached out to a plumber to understand her protagonists home repairs and spent time with an engineer to grasp the details of his work building dams. 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. degree. By most measures the worlds largest charitable foundation, Gates made those grants with a staff of over 1,700 employees. The secret benefactor turned out, of course, to be Ms. Scott. According to her classmates, she was unconscious and intermittently seizing for roughly an hour, because it took emergency medical personnel that long to extract her from the building, as they struggled to fit a stretcher into the elevator or the stairway. MacKenzie continued writing and developed an early but lasting propensity for deep research. She took a sip of water and began crying. She broke me. She concluded, I was never broken. There was also a nascent sense in the book of philanthropy as a good. Husband of Private. This girl is traumatized. They take us where we need to go.. Her fathers financial firm declared bankruptcy, and so did her parents. ), In her Rhodes application, Mackenzie proposed studying the entanglement between the child-welfare and juvenile-justice systems (the subject of her undergraduate thesis, too)a project she hoped would uplift the voices of my foster peers. But, in two paragraphs that drew connections between her personal background and scholarly interests, she took some liberties, such as describing a kid at one of her foster homes as a foster child, even though he was actually her foster parents biological child. Investigate Cardiologist MD Carrie Morrisons Child Abuse Case And as a recent college graduate, working in recruitment at a financial firm, she married the man in the office next to hers, Jeff Bezos, and moved to Seattle to help him pursue his dream of an online retail empire one that would make each of them among the wealthiest people in the world even after their marriage dissolved. I had that feeling of stage fright before a firing squad for my first reading.. She gave overwhelmingly to groups led by women, people of color, members of the L.G.B.T.Q. ), After investigating Mackenzie for more than three months, the O.S.C. Rachel Webb, one of Mackenzies teachers from elementary school, said that Morrison left a message on her voice mail. She has set about disbursing her enormous fortune with unprecedented speed and directness to frontline charities and nonprofits with a stated emphasis on advancing social justice and combating inequality, all while trying to keep herself out of the spotlight. Many in publishing were resentful. The D.S.S. Her friend Stephen Damianos, who had just been chosen for the scholarship, had told her she would be an ideal candidate. He was not able to provide a direct answer, she later wrote. Good luck, bad luck, its not the way that we really need to look at things, she told the television host Charlie Rose in 2013, after relating the parable to him. Make the most of the year, and look twice before you leave. Anea Moore, then a sophomore, had helped found the group the previous year. She was no longer seen publicly as Jeff Bezos ex-wife first. Morrison challenged this decision, but the Missouri Child Abuse and Neglect Review Board, an independent panel appointed by the governor, upheld the finding. This article is also based on previously unpublished letters between Ms. Scott and Ms. Morrison, kept in the Nobel laureates archive at the Princeton University library. Carrie Morrison Mackenzies biological mother had graduated from college and was a successful doctor. A month later, the Rhodes Trust informed Mackenzie that it was launching an investigation into her personal history. And in her, Korzen sees a sense of belonging that shes never felt. I am grieving the idea of herthe idea I had once created for her., Mackenzie told me that, in the past year, shes experienced a state of self-doubt that she hadnt known since high school: There have been moments of almost panic where I am just cognitively questioning myself, like, Did I misremember something? Its easy to slide back into that state, because I want anything other than the realitythat it is my bio family who has caused so much harmso I will do backflips to try to make it not true. In her high-school journal, she had described this cycle of doubt. An ambulance was called, and Mackenzie was taken to Mercy Hospital, in St.Louis, and admitted into the pediatric intensive-care unit. And this next question may be tough. At the end of the interview, she offered to connect Mackenzie with support. Genealogy for James Thomson Morrison (c.1861 - d.) family tree on Geni, with over 230 million profiles of ancestors and living relatives. The chosen charities were told they could not announce the gifts until the donor did. She met with the associate director of special services within Penns Division of Public Safety to share her fear that her family had discovered where she lived. He was known among fellow teachers for giving high-fives to all the faculty members on Friday afternoons. But he was troubled that her status as a low-income student had ever been challenged. In a psychological evaluation administered by the D.S.S., she was asked to share anything about her life that she wanted others to understand. 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. The father of one of Mackenzies high-school peers reached out to a Penn official, to explain that the news coverage about Mackenzie was inaccurate. He was informing friends, he told them at the time, because the news was about to come out in the tabloids. Lisa Smith, the mother of one of Mackenzies best friends at Whitfield, said that her daughter once asked why Mackenzie was always injured: My daughter kind of looked at me funny, and I looked back at her and said, What are you trying to say?, When Fendell asked Mackenzie about her bruises, Mackenzie offered vague comments about being clumsy. Before Morrisons case could go before a grand jury, the St. Louis County assistant prosecuting attorney dropped all the charges. Universities didnt start regularly tracking first-generation status until the early two-thousands, and there has never been a clear definition of the term, which emerged in part because it was a more politically digestible label than race. Waitressing was hard, and something was not clicking yet with her goal of writing a novel. Shortly before Ms. Scotts 17th birthday, her familys fortunes took a sudden turn. But, she wrote, if I truly cant do this, where am I supposed to return to?, Holiday breaks were a source of panic. As you revise, I am at your service if, and only if, you want me to be, Ms. Morrison had written in a three-page typed letter of suggestions for her manuscript, a copy of which is in her archive at Princeton. This definition resembles the one used in the federal Higher Education Act, which says that first-generation status depends on the education level of a parent whom a student regularly resided with and received support from. (A spokesperson for the university said that Penn First Pluss definition is designed to be inclusive and is not the institutions official definition. She wanted to sever her remaining ties with her biological family, and she hoped a new name would make it harder for her mother to find her. A professor of constitutional law and a former associate dean, Smith had previously worked at Yale, where he chaired the schools undergraduate student-disciplinary committee. Mackenzie said that her college counsellor had told her that, as an independent student estranged from her family, this information was not required. In her applications to college and to social-work school, she had written that, in 2014, she had become a ward of the state once againMackenzie said that she was referring to her involvement in the family-court system as a child but acknowledged that the phrase was confusing. No girls in velvet dresses, was disappointing. What happened after that? Winkelstein asked. It was their biggest commitment to charity yet and likely among their last as a couple. Over the past year, Ms. Scott has announced grants totaling $6.6 billion. She gave big. 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 Morrisons name was entered into a state registry for perpetrators of abuse and neglect. Forbes in January calculated that he had paid out $2.1 billion in charitable giving so far. She was trying so hard to please, to get acceptance. At Penn, Mackenzie began to realize, Oh, I actually have no idea who I am., When Mackenzie had applied to Penn, the universitys automatic coding system had categorized her application as first generation, because she had not filled in personal data about her biological parents. 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. She was., Mackenzie was admitted to the University of Pennsylvania with a full scholarship, facilitated by QuestBridge. She said that she was usually glad not to have to line edit for a living anymore. Both her parents had recently died, and she was going through a severe depression, but, she told me, Penn dragged me to every single news outlet that asked for an interview and sent a Penn communications person with me to make sure I said the right things. Nevertheless, Raffaele encouraged her not to take any risks. That summer, Mackenzie decided to apply for a Rhodes Scholarship, to get a Ph.D. at the University of Oxford. Mackenzie remembered that, two years earlier, a student named Cameron Driver, a thirty-eight-year-old Black man, had had a medical emergency in the Caster basement. Dorothy L. Espelage, a psychologist specializing in bullying prevention, recalled in an interview how she was sitting in a parking lot at the University of Illinois, where she worked at the time, when her phone rang. I envy her because shes so important.. Meet Mother Father and Radiologist Parents Mackenzie Fiercetons mother works as a radiologist and was raised in an upper-middle-class family. Her grandfather had completed his studies at the university level. With the help of a scholarship, Ms. Scott still managed to go to Princeton, albeit with a new, heavier burden. Or even to write everything down in here. It quickly became clear, he said, that this was a very unusual process, and my knowledge of standard disciplinary processes was of limited relevance. O.S.C. In another letter, Mackenzies lawyers argued that she had not constructed a narrative about herself to deceive anyone, but instead had tried to build a new identity after a trauma that had made her question nearly every aspect of her life. 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, she wrote, and worried about how I might pay my rent with the nickels they gave me in exchange for my ennui.. In a press release, Gutmann expressed pride that the award had gone to a first-generation low-income student and a former foster youth. After the announcement, Wendy Ruderman, a reporter from the Philadelphia Inquirer, interviewed Mackenzie for roughly twenty-five minutes. To revisit this article, select My Account, thenView saved stories, To revisit this article, visit My Profile, then View saved stories. notifying her that the university had requested an investigation because of concerns that you misrepresented and/or embellished your background. She was supposed to receive her social-work degree the following month, but the letter said that her records would automatically be placed on hold until this matter is resolved., Norton asked Rogers Smith, a colleague in the political-science department, if he would serve as Mackenzies adviser for the disciplinary proceedings. After graduation, Ms. Scott went back to Hotchkiss and taught a summer creative writing program. 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