Andy Jassy, The New Man At Helm of Amazon

Andy Jassy, The New Man At Helm of Amazon

A disciple of Jeff Bezos and now his successor, Andy Jassy took over the reins of Amazon as the CEO from 5 July 2021. As the world’s richest man decided to take retirement, he turned to Andy and this was not the first time that he chose Andy.

Andy was almost lost his job to lay-offs a few years after he joined and Bezos was the one who came forward to save him. To discover about the new man at the helm of Amazon, read the brief article below:

Andy Jassy or Andrew R. Jassy was born on 13th January 1986. He completed his graduation and post-graduation in Masters in Business Administration from Harvard University and joined Amazon. While the 1994 established company diversified over the years as Bezos digressed from his original plan of establishing an online book store.

One such diversification was Amazon Web Services, whose cloud-computing tool was used to power the website and the businesses of third-party vendors on the platform. Before the launch of this segment, Jassy was already a part of Amazon. His journey with Amazon begin in 1997 when he joined the company with several other Harvard MBA colleagues.

Jassy restarted his career after his MBA by taking roles that included marketing manager in Amazon. He and Bezos came up with the idea to create the cloud computing platform or Amazon Web Services (AWS) in 2003. The idea was to support the website and third parties on the platform.

However, with the realisation that cloud services can be sold to other companies and businesses, AWS launched in 2006. Founded by Andy Jassy with a team of 57 people, today, it has reached various milestones including being worth $400 billion.

A decade later, he became the CEO of AWS after being recognised as Person of the Year by the Financial Times a month earlier. He earned $36.6 million in 2016. Four years down the line, in 2020, the visionary who build the pioneer in the infrastructure technology space earned a base compensation of $175,000, plus a restricted stock unit award of 4,023 shares (a value of $12,104,844.93 as of July 26, 2020) of Amazon with vesting beginning in 2023.

He also received a restricted stock unit award in April 2018 for 10,000 shares (a value of $30,089,100 as of July 26, 2020), which vest 37.5% in 2021, 12.5% in 2022, 37.5% in 2023, and 12.5% in 2024

Founding Amazon Music

Apart from AWS, Andy was part of another crucial segment of Amazon as it entered the online music streaming industry with Amazon Music in 2007. He was a part of the early days of the brand and would host “silly games” to bring out the competitiveness of the team.

Succeeding Bezos

After the announcement of him succeeding Bezos in February 2021, he took over the reins as CEO of Amazon on 5th July 2021 while Bezos transitioned into executive chairman. While he has closely worked with Bezos and other executives at Amazon, he has been closely involved in the daily activities from marketing to pricing and has even assisted in naming products.

Outside Amazon, Jassy is also the chairman of Rainier Prep, a charter school in Seattle.

Shedding light on his personal life, he has been sharing the relationship with his wife for the same year since he joined Amazon, 1997. He married Elana Rochelle Caplan, a fashion designer for Eddie Bauer.

She is the daughter of another senior partner in the law firm Dewey Ballantine as Jassy’s dad. She is a graduate of the Philadelphia College of Textiles and Science, at the Loews Santa Monica Beach Hotel.

Today, they, with their two children live in the Capitol Hill neighbourhood of Seattle. Their house is a 10,000-square-foot property bought in 2009 for $3.1 million. While in October 2020, it was reported that Jassy had bought a $6.7 million 5,500-square-foot house in Santa Monica, California.