Billionaire Shows That One Good Turn Deserves Another

As a Princeton University sophomore, a future billionaire faced the prospect of dropping out if she couldn't come up with $1,000. Happily, her roommate Jeannie Tarkenton arranged a loan for her.

Jeannie Tarkenton

This important moment in the life of Mackenzie Scott taught her what it was like to be on the receiving end of generosity. Fast forward to today, and Scott is now one of the wealthiest people on the planet with a net worth of around $34 billion, according to Forbes. Recently, Scott wrote that Tarkenton's act is among the many personal kindnesses she has considered as she has donated more than $19 billion of the wealth she amassed mostly through Amazon shares as part of her 2019 divorce from company founder Jeff Bezos.

So, when Tarkenton started Funding U, a lending company that offers last-gap, merit-based loans to low-income students without co-signers, Scott jumped at the chance to help. Even though nearly three decades have passed between their sophomore year and Funding U's creation, Tarkenton realized just how many more students were being pushed into her former roommate's position by the rising cost of college.

Scott, in many ways, resembled the exact students that Funding U seeks to serve. Tarkenton recalled the undergraduate Scott as a “hardworking student with very good grades” who was “highly focused." Her lending company plugs those sorts of details - student transcripts and internship experiences, for example - into an algorithm that determines the likelihood applicants will complete college, get a job and make enough money to pay back the loan.

Tarkenton is clear: the endeavor isn't philanthropic. Funding U is a company, after all, and Scott will eventually get her money back - just as she repaid Tarkenton's informal loan all those years ago at Princeton.

Scott described the Funding U loans as “generosity- and gratitude-powered” in a recent essay about the ripple effects of kindness.

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