Lauren Sánchez says being known as 'Jeff Bezos' fiancée' is a responsibility
Lauren Sánchez spoke at the Forbes Power Women's Summit 2024 on Wednesday.
She said many people define her based on her relationship with Jeff Bezos.
Sánchez thinks she has a responsibility to use the platform the relationship gives her for good.
Lauren Sánchez knows what you're thinking about her.
Sánchez, 54, spoke to Moira Forbes at the Forbes Power Women's Summit 2024 on Wednesday about her children's book and her philanthropic work with her fiancé, Jeff Bezos.
Sánchez also addressed the fact that many people only associate her with Bezos.
"I'm in this room with all these influential and powerful women," she said. "I'm looking around and going, 'Whoa,' and it doesn't escape me that most of you know me as Lauren Sánchez, comma, Jeff Bezos' fiancée."
"I get it, but I can choose to do something, or I can choose to do nothing," Sánchez said. "And I'm choosing to do something."
Sánchez and Bezos have been a public couple since January 2019, when their relationship was revealed the same day Bezos announced his divorce from MacKenzie Scott. Sánchez and Bezos got engaged in May 2023.
In her conversation with Forbes, Sánchez said she tries to use the platform her relationship gives her to spotlight others' experiences.
"In my life as a journalist, I was able to amplify incredible people's stories and what I call illuminate them," she said. "Now I get to do it in a different way, and I really take it like this responsibility I hold in high regard."
Before her relationship with Bezos, Sánchez, a mother of three, was an Emmy-winning broadcast journalist. She's also a licensed helicopter pilot.
She works with Bezos on philanthropic endeavors like the Bezos Earth Fund, a $10 billion effort to fight the climate crisis. Her first children's book, called "The Fly Who Flew to Space," was released Tuesday. The book follows a fly who wants to be an astronaut but struggles in school.
Though they spend much of their working — and leisure — hours together, Sánchez told Forbes that Bezos supports her to take on her own projects.
"Jeff really puts me out there, and he goes, 'Go out there. Do your thing,'" she said. "He encourages me, and I'm lucky to have a partner like that."
And she said that support goes both ways.
"Jeff doesn't need all the support, and I encourage him just like he encourages me," she said. "A lot of people say this about Jeff, like, 'Oh, he's changed.' He hasn't changed. He's just being revealed more and more every day."
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