Thursday, November 30, 2017

Here’s who really runs Amazon — and only 2 of the top 38 execs are women

Jeff Bezos has diversified his business but not his top ranks.
An organizational chart viewed by CNBC shows only two women at the VP level or higher reporting directly to one of the company’s CEOs.
Amazon appears to be making an effort to have more female leaders.

Getty Images | Alex Wong

It’s a big week for Amazon.

Cyber Monday and the mass of online shoppers brought another record high in Amazon’s stock price, while in Las Vegas, the company’s cloud computing business kicked off its annual re:Invent conference.

Amazon’s 2017 rally lifted Jeff Bezos’ net worth past $100 billion on Friday, and he now towers over Bill Gates and Warren Buffett on the list of the world’s richest people.

With so much going on inside Amazon, including the hunt for a second headquarters location, CNBC decided it was a good time to find out who are the power players at this sprawling company.

We tracked down an organization chart, which is available internally but not to the public.

One immediately noticeable fact is that Amazon, like so much of the tech universe, is a company run by men. Specifically white men.

In marketplace, Prime and AWS, or what Bezos likes to call the three pillars of the business, there are 37 people under the CEO who report directly to him — or are one layer removed — with at least the title of vice president. Only two of them are women.

‘Simply right’

That theme will be clearly on display at re:Invent. Andy Jassy is CEO of the cloud unit and only one of the 15 most senior people below him is a woman.

Amazon appears to be making an effort to fix this problem. As Recode reported last month, a growing number of women are leading important parts of the company. They include Toni Reid with Alexa, Stephenie Landry in Prime Now and Jennifer Cast at Amazon Books. The company also has technical advisors, who shadow the unit CEOs and attend all of their meetings for training purposes. Currently, two of the three are women.

Still, the numbers are vastly underwhelming for a company that makes diversity part of its leadership principles. In fact, Bezos wrote in a letter last year that diversity and inclusion are not just good for business, but “simply right.” In the list below, there are no African-Americans and three people of Asian descent.

Amazon didn’t respond to a request for comment.

Most people on the list have spent years, if not decades, at the company. Jassy along with Jeff Wilke, CEO of the consumer group, and Jeff Blackburn, who runs the video and ads businesses, have been at Amazon since its early days. Dave Clark, who runs retail operations, and Greg Greeley, who leads Prime, both joined the company in 1999.

There have also been more recent high-profile hires. Babak Parviz, who created Google Glass, joined Amazon in 2014 and now runs a special team called “Grand Challenge.” Adam Bosworth, who left Salesforcelast year, is in charge of the AWS software team. Dave Treadwell, a 27-year Microsoft veteran, joined Amazon last year as vice president of e-commerce services.