Career Profile

Of
Jeff Bezos
Jeffrey Preston Bezos (Jorgensen; born January 12, 1964) is an American
technology entrepreneur and investor. He is the founder, CEO, and president
of Amazon.com, Inc.
Bezos was born in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and raised in Houston, Texas. He
graduated from Princeton University in 1986 with degrees in electrical engineering
and computer science. He worked on Wall Street in a variety of related fields from
1986 to early 1994. He founded Amazon in late 1994 on a cross-country road trip
from New York City to Seattle. The company began as an online bookstore and has
since expanded to a wide variety of other e-commerce products and services,
including video and audio streaming, cloud computing, and artificial intelligence. It
is currently the world's largest online sales company, the largest internet company
by revenue, as well as the world's largest provider of AI assistance and cloud
infrastructure services via its Amazon Web Services arm.
Bezos added to his business interests when he founded the aerospace
manufacturer and sub-orbital spaceflight services company Blue Origin in 2000. A
Blue Origin test flight successfully first reached space in 2015, and the company has
plans to begin commercial suborbital human spaceflight in 2019. He purchased
major American daily newspaper The Washington Post in 2013
for US$250 million in cash, and manages other business investments through his
venture capital fund, Bezos Expeditions.
On July 27, 2017, Bezos momentarily became the world's wealthiest person when
his estimated net worth increased to just over $90 billion. His wealth surpassed
$100 billion for the first time on November 24, 2017, and he was formally
designated the wealthiest person in the world by Forbes on March 6, 2018, with a
net worth of $112 billion. The first centi-billionaire on the Forbes wealth index, he
was named the "richest man in modern history" after his net worth increased to
$150 billion in July 2018. In September 2018, Forbes described Bezos as "far richer
than anyone else on the planet" as he added $1.8 billion to his worth when Amazon's
market cap briefly reached $1 trillion.
EARLY LIFE OF JEFF BEZOS
Bezos was born Jeffrey Preston Jorgensen on January 12, 1964, in Albuquerque,
New Mexico, the son of Jacklyn Gise Jorgensen and Ted Jorgensen. At the time of
his birth, his mother was a 17-year-old high school student, and his father was a bike
shop owner. After Jacklyn divorced Ted, she married Cuban immigrant Miguel
"Mike" Bezos in April 1968. Shortly after the wedding, Mike adopted four-year-old
Jorgensen, whose surname was then changed to Bezos. The family moved
to Houston, Texas, where Mike worked as an engineer for Exxon after he received
a degree from the University of New Mexico. Bezos attended River Oaks
Elementary School in Houston from fourth to sixth grade.
Bezos' maternal grandfather was Lawrence Preston Gise, a regional director of
the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) in Albuquerque. Gise retired early to
his family's ranch near Cotulla, Texas, where Bezos would spend many summers in
his youth. Bezos would later purchase this ranch and expand it from 25,000 acres
(10,117 ha) to 300,000 acres (121,406 ha). His maternal grandmother was Mattie
Louise Gise (née Strait), through whom he is a cousin of country singer George
Strait. Bezos often displayed scientific interests and technological proficiency; he
once rigged an electric alarm to keep his younger siblings out of his room.
The family moved to Miami, Florida, where Bezos attended Miami Palmetto High
School. While Bezos was in high school, he worked at McDonald's as a short-
order line cook during the breakfast shift. He attended the Student Science Training
Program at the University of Florida. He was high school valedictorian, a National
Merit Scholar, and a Silver Knight Award winner in 1982. In the graduation speech
Bezos told the audience he dreamed of the day when the people of earth
would colonize space. A local newspaper quoted his intention "to get all people off
the Earth and see it turned into a huge national park."
In 1986, he graduated from Princeton University with a 4.2 grade point
average and Bachelor of Science degrees in electrical engineering and computer
science and was a member of Phi Beta Kappa. While at Princeton, he was also
elected to Tau Beta Pi and was the president of the Princeton chapter of the Students
for the Exploration and Development of Space.
BUSINESS CAREER
1. Amazon
Amazon was founded by Jeff Bezos on July 5, 1994, in Bellevue, Washington. The
company initially started as an online marketplace for books but later expanded to
sell electronics, software, video games, apparel, furniture, food, toys, and jewelry.
In 2015, Amazon surpassed Walmart as the most valuable retailer in the United
States by market capitalization. In 2017, Amazon acquired Whole Foods Market for
$13.4 billion, which vastly increased Amazon's presence as a brick-and-mortar
retailer. In 2018, Bezos announced that its two-day delivery service, Amazon Prime,
had surpassed 100 million subscribers worldwide.
2. Blue Origin
Blue Origin, LLC is an American privately funded aerospace manufacturer and sub-
orbital spaceflight services company headquartered in Kent, Washington. Founded
in 2000 by Jeff Bezos, the company is led by CEO Bob Smith and is developing
technologies to enable private human access to space with the goal to dramatically
lower costs and increase reliability. Blue Origin is employing an incremental
approach from suborbital to orbital flight, with each developmental step building on
its prior work. The company motto is Gradatim Ferociter, Latin for "Step by Step,
Ferociously".