MacKenzie Bezos Net Worth, Nazak Nikakhtar, Women Instacart: Broadsheet May 28

Good morning, Broadsheet readers! We visit the women running Quebec’s wine scene, MacKenzie Bezos has money to share, and two bosses walk the walk on paternity leave. Make the most of your Tuesday.

• EVERYONE’S TALKING

  • MacKenzie’s money. When the Bezos finalized the most expensive divorce ever in April, MacKenzie Bezos walked away with $36.6 billion. Her newfound individual fortune catapulted her to into the top echelon of the world’s richest people, where few women exist. She’s currently No. 22. There are only two women on earth, Jacqueline Mars and Alice Walton, who are worth more.

  I wrote at the time about why her money mattered. There is inherent power that goes along with such extraordinary sums, so it’s worth pointing out the rare occasions when it ends up in women’s hands. Plus, in managing their wealth, women are more socially-minded; they’re more interested than men in ‘sustainable’ investing and “making the greatest impact” is the top factor in their charitable giving. (Men’s is tax benefits.)

  In April, MacKenzie Bezos didn’t indicate what she’d do with her money. “Excited about my own plans,” she said. But today she lived up to that earlier analysis by signing up to Warren Buffett’s Giving Pledge, which commits the uber-rich to giving away at least half of their wealth. In a letter, she says she has “a disproportionate amount of money to share,” and that her approach to philanthropy will “continue to be thoughtful.”

  “It will take time and effort and care,” she said. “But I won’t wait. And I will keep at it until the safe is empty.”

  In covering the news, the Financial Times added this side: “Mr. Bezos, the world’s richest man, is notably absent from the list.”

  Claire Zillman @clairezillman claire.zillman@fortune.com

• ALSO IN THE HEADLINES

  • A hardliner on Huawei. Here’s a profile of Nazak Nikakhtar, acting head of the Commerce Department’s bureau of industry and security, who’s “a little-known hardliner playing a big role in implementing the [Trump] administration’s combustible international economic agenda.” Her current project? Overseeing the U.S. crackdown on Chinese telecom equipment maker Huawei. Financial Times

  • Cheers to that. For Fortune, Katie Sehl dives into Quebec’s wine scene—one where women are running the show, especially compared to France. Véronique Rivest is one of the sommeliers at the forefront of the industry. Fortune

  • Special delivery. Women in their 40s and 50s now make up more than half the contractors working for major food delivery apps like Instacart, DoorDash, Postmates, and Shipt. They’re drawn to the flexibility of the work and to its relatively safety, since these gig economy jobs don’t mean inviting a stranger into your car. NPR

  • Military IDs. For Memorial Day, the New York Times looked at Arlington, Virginia’s Women in Military Service for America Memorial—underfunded by federal money and, the story theorizes, female veterans who prefer to focus on their civilian identities after returning home compared to their male peers. New York Times

• IN CASE YOU MISSED IT

  • Masako’s moment. President Donald Trump’s state visit to Japan this weekend put a spotlight on Empress Masako, finally allowed to use her Harvard education and multilingualism now that she has a role in the Imperial Family other than producing an heir. The Japanese public was impressed by the empress’s fluent English as she spoke with the Trumps. New York Times

  • College-bound. Sonita Alleyne is the first black person to lead a college at either Oxford or Cambridge, the U.K.’s most prestigious universities, after being elected master of Jesus College at Cambridge. The entrepreneur who’s chairwoman of the British Board of Film Classification’s management council is also the first female head of the college, which, at 523 years old, is Cambridge’s oldest. Guardian

  • Marine v. Macron. One outcome of Europe’s elections this past week: Marine Le Pen’s far-right anti-EU National Rally beat out the party of Emmanuel Macron, marking a sort of resurgence for the firebrand politician following her failed 2017 bid for the French presidency. Reuters

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• ON MY RADAR

  TV’s reckoning with #MeToo The New Yorker

  WNBA Kicks proving female players are sneakerheads too The Undefeated

  It’s taken 5 decades to get the PhD her abusive professor denied her New York Times

• QUOTE

  

  Mother, champion, queen, goddess. The words printed on Serena Williams's outfit at the French Open