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Jeff Bezos
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Jeffrey Preston "Jeff" Bezos (/bezs/; born January 12, 1964) is an American entrepreneur who played a key role in the growth of e-commerce as the founder and CEO of Amazon.com, Inc., an online merchant of books and later of a wide variety of products. Under his guidance, Amazon.com became the largest retailer on the World Wide Web and the model for Internet sales.
Contents [hide] 1 Early life and career 2 Business career 2.1 Amazon.com 2.2 Blue Origin 2.3 Recognition 3 References 4 External links

Jeff Bezos

Jeff Bezos 2005

Early life and career

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Born

Bezos was born Jeffrey Preston Jorgensen in Albuquerque, New Mexico, to Jacklyn Gise Jorgensen and Ted Jorgensen.[3] His maternal ancestors were settlers who lived in Texas, and over the generations acquired a 25,000 acre (101 km2 or 39 miles2) ranch in Cotulla. Bezos' maternal grandfather was a regional director of the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission in Albuquerque. He retired early to the ranch, where Bezos spent many summers as a youth, working with him.[4] At an early age, Bezos displayed a striking mechanical aptitude as a toddler, he tried dismantling his crib[5]

Alma mater

Jeffrey Preston Jorgensen January 12, 1964 (age 48) Albuquerque, New Mexico, U.S. Princeton University

Occupation Chairman and CEO of Amazon.com Net worth US$ 21.4 billion (2012)[1] Spouse(s) Mackenzie Bezos (m. 1993)[2] Awards Time Person of the Year 1999

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Bezos was born to a teenage mother in Albuquerque. Her marriage to his father lasted little more than a year. When Jeff was five, she remarried, this time to Miguel Bezos. Miguel was born in Cuba, migrated to the United States alone when he was fifteen years old, worked his way through the University of Albuquerque, married, and legally adopted Jeff. After the marriage, the family moved to Houston, Texas, and Miguel became an engineer for Exxon. The young Bezos attended River Oaks Elementary School in Houston from fourth to sixth grade. As a child, he spent summers at his grandfather's ranch in southern Texas, "laying pipe, vaccinating cattle and fixing windmills."[6] Bezos often showed intense scientific interests. He rigged an electric alarm to keep his younger siblings out of his room. He converted his parents' garage into a laboratory for science projects.[citation needed] The family moved to Miami, Florida, where Bezos attended Miami Palmetto Senior High School. While in high school, he attended the Student Science Training Program at the University of Florida, receiving a Silver Knight Award in 1982.[7] He was high school valedictorian.[8] He attended Princeton University, planning to study physics, but soon returned to his love of computers and graduated summa cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa, with a Bachelor of Science in electrical engineering and computer science. According to Nick Hanauer (an early investor in Amazon) and "others who know [him]", [6] Bezos is described as a libertarian.[6] In July 2012, Bezos and his wife personally donated $2.5 million to pass a same-sex marriage referendum in Washington State.[9] According to the web site Newsmeat.com, a web site that documents political donations made by "the powerful, rich, and famous" since 1977 (and donations higher than $200), Bezos has donated $16,000 to United States Democrats, $2,000 to United States Republicans, and $55,000 to special interests as of September 6, 2012.[10]

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Business career

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After graduating from Princeton University in 1986, Bezos worked on Wall Street in the computer science field.[11] Then he worked on building a network for international trade for a company known as Fitel. He next worked at Bankers Trust, where he became vicepresident. Later on he also worked in computer science for D. E. Shaw & Co.

Amazon.com

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Bezos founded Amazon.com in 1994 after making a cross-country drive from New York to Seattle, writing up the Amazon business plan on the way. He initially set up the company in his garage.[12] He had left his "well-paying job" at a New York City hedge fund when he "learned about the rapid growth in Internet use", which coincided with a "then-new U.S. Supreme Court ruling [that] online retailers don't have to collect sales taxes in states where they lack a physical presence"; he had headed to Washington because its relatively small population meant fewer of his future customers would have to pay sales tax.[6] According to Forbes, Amazon's shares have "defied gravity" in 2011, jumping 55% and adding $6.5 billion to his net worth. [13] Bezos is known for his attention to business details. As described by Portfolio.com, he "is at once a happy-go-lucky mogul and a notorious micromanager. ... an executive who wants to know about everything from contract minutiae to how he is quoted in all Amazon press releases."[12]

Blue Origin

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In 2000, Bezos founded Blue Origin, a human spaceflight startup company,[14] partially as a result of his fascination with space travel,[15] including an early interest in developing "space hotels, amusement parks and colonies for 2 million or 3 million people orbiting the
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Earth."[8] The company was kept under wraps for a half dozen years and initially became publicly known only in 2006 when purchasing a sizable aggregation of land in west Texas for a launch and test facility.[16] In a 2011 interview, Bezos indicated that he founded the space company to help enable "anybody to go into space" and stated that the company is committed to decreasing the cost and increasing the safety of spaceflight.[17] Blue Origin is "one of several start-ups aiming to open up space travel to paying customers. Like Amazon, the company is secretive, but [in September 2011] revealed that it had lost an unmanned prototype vehicle during a short-hop [sic] test flight. Although this was a setback, the announcement of the loss revealed for the first time just how far Blue Origins team had advanced."[15] Bezos said that the crash was 'not the outcome that any of us wanted, but we signed up for this to be hard.'" [15]

Recognition

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He was named Time magazine's Person of the Year in 1999.[18] In 2008, he was selected by U.S. News & World Report as one of America's best leaders.[19] Bezos was awarded an honorary doctorate in Science and Technology from Carnegie Mellon University in 2008. In 2011, The Economist gave Bezos and Gregg Zehr an Innovation Award for the Amazon Kindle.[20] He is also a member of the Bilderberg Group and attended the Swiss 2011 Bilderberg conference in St. Moritz, Switzerland.[21]

References
1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15.

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16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21.

^ "Jeff Bezos" . Bloomberg Billionaires Index News. Retrieved 2012-07-04. "Jeff Bezos; $21.4 B; Calculated July 2012" ^ Wired. http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/7.03/bezos_pr.html . ^ Robinson, Tom (2009). Jeff Bezos: Amazon.com Architect . ABDO. p. 14. ISBN 978-1-60453-759-8. ^ Biography and Video Interview of Jeff Bezos at Academy of Achievement. ^ Hof, Robert D. (December 14, 1998). "The torrent of energy behind Amazon" . Businessweek. ^ a b c d Martinez, Amy; Heim, Kristi (March 31, 2012). "Amazon a virtual no-show in hometown philanthropy" . The Seattle Times. Retrieved 2012-04-01. ^ "Miami-Dade Winners" . Silver Knight Awards. Archived from the original on November 21, 2008. ^ a b Martinez, Amy (201-03-31). l "Amazon.com's Bezos invests in space travel, time" . Seattle Times. Retrieved 2012-04-23. ^ Shear, Micheal D. (July 27, 2012). "Amazon's Founder Pledges $2.5 Million in Support of Same Sex Marriage" . New York Times. ^ http://newsmeat.com/billionaire_political_donations/Jeff_Bezos.php ^ "Tau Beta Pi Leaders and Innovators" . The Tau Beta Pi Association. ^ a b "Top Executive Profiles - Jeffrey P. Bezos" . Portfolio.com. Archived from the original on February 4, 2009. ^ O'Connor, Clare (September 29, 2011). "Jeff Bezos: Amazon's Rocket Man Keeps Getting Richer" . Forbes. ^ Boyle, Alan (2006-11-11). "Blue Origin Revealed" . cosmiclog.msnbc.msn.com. Retrieved 2011-12-09. ^ a b c "Taking the long view: Jeff Bezos, the founder and chief executive of Amazon, owes much of his success to his ability to look beyond the short-term view of things" . Technology Quarterly. 2012-03-03. Retrieved 2012-03-03. "Mr Bezoss willingness to take a long-term view also explains his fascination with space travel, and his decision to found a secretive company called Blue Origin, one of several start-ups now building spacecraft with private funding." ^ Mylene Mangalindan (2006-11-10). "Buzz in West Texas is about Jeff Bezos space craft launch site" . The Wall Street Journal. Retrieved 2008-05-28. ^ Levy, Stephen (2011-11-13). "Jeff Bezos Owns the Web in More Ways Than You Think" . Wired. Retrieved 2011-12-09. ^ Cooper Ramo, Joshua (December 27, 1999). "Jeffrey Preston Bezos: 1999 Person of the year" . Time Magazine. ^ LaGesse, David (November 19, 2008). "America's Best Leaders: Jeff Bezos, Amazon.com CEO" . U.S. News & World Report. Retrieved 2008-11-25. ^ "Charging ahead: e-book design and popularity win Kindle creators Innovation Award" . The Economist. September 19, 2011. ^ "Bilderberg 2011 list of participants" . BilderbergMeetings.org. Retrieved August 24, 2011.

External links
Jeff Bezos at TED Appearances on C-SPAN Jeff Bezos on Charlie Rose Jeff Bezos at the Internet Movie Database Works by or about Jeff Bezos in libraries (WorldCat catalog) Jeff Bezos collected news and commentary at The New York Times Jeff Bezos at the Notable Names Database Cond Nast Portfolio Executive Profile - Portfolio.com (August 2007) Inside the Mind of Jeff Bezos - Fastcompany.com (August 2004)
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Amazon.com Time Persons of the Year (1976-2000)

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Categories: Amazon.com people American billionaires American chief executives American technology company founders Chairmen of corporations American computer businesspeople Businesspeople in internet retailing Princeton University alumni Living people 1964 births American adoptees People from Albuquerque, New Mexico Fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences

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