Jeffrey Preston ‘Jeff’ Bezos is one of the most successful technology tycoons and investors in the world currently. He is the Founder and CEO, Amazon.com, the largest retailer on the World Wide Web. It has become a role model for every online retailer in the world. Bezos has even acquired ‘The Washington Post’. Standing on the ‘First Spot’ on the Forbes List of Billionaires 2020, Bezos is simply unstoppable!

Bezos is one among the top leading private investors of the world to be a part of the “Mission Innovation” at the 2015 United Nations Climate Change Conference, in Paris. Powerful Global Leaders along with well-known established investors from 20 countries are joining hands to be part of the “Mission Innovation”. The sole aim is to boost and accelerate the modernisation process of global clean energy and make it widely affordable.

Bezos had foreseen the future of Cloud Computing way back before anyone else. AWS (Amazon Web Services) is minting in multi-billion dollars.

Bezos’ spaceflight company Blue Origin successfully launched its first rocket “New Shepard” recently. The Company aims at developing a ‘reusable’ vehicle with a seating capacity of six passengers for space travel.

Jeffrey Preston Jorgensen (Bezos) was born on January 12, 1964, in Albuquerque, New Mexico to Ted and Jacklyn Jorgensen. Bezos’ mother left his father and married a Cuban immigrant, Mike Bezos and moved to Houston, Texas. Jeffrey studied at the River Oaks Elementary School, Houston and later at the Miami Palmetto Senior High School, when the family shifted to Miami. Jeff enrolled in the Student Science Training Programme at the University of Florida.

He was accorded the ‘Silver Knight Award’ for his brilliant performance. He excelled in academics, becoming a National Merit Scholar and a high-school valedictorian. He graduated summa cum laude in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from Princeton University. His interest and aptitude for science and technology was apparent from a very young age. Jeff was a member of Phi Beta Kappa and Tau Beta Pi ‘honour’ societies at Princeton. He was the President of the ‘Chapter of the Students for the Exploration and Development of Space’.

Jeff Bezos worked in the field of computer science on Wall Street. He developed an international trade network for the company, Fitel. Jeff was employed with Bankers’ Trust. His rise in the business world was meteoric. Jeff was the youngest senior Vice-President at D E Shaw, an investment company. Four years down the line in 1994, he shifted base to Seattle and launched Amazon.com, a virtual bookstore. Amazon.com is currently the largest retailer on the World Wide Web.

What started as a small venture in Bezos’ garage is now a symbol of internet sale. He may rightly be called a pioneer in e-commerce. Amazon.com, which derives its name from the South American river, Amazon, was launched in 1995. The site became an instant hit! The company was made public in just two years of being started. Bezos expanded his business and several other products were added to Amazon.com through retail joint ventures. Growing from strength-to-strength, Amazon.com launched ‘The Kindle’. It is a digital book with multiple features. Amazon enjoys an unchallenged position among other similar e-commerce sites.

AWS is now the envy of all tech giant companies. Bezos’ visionary abilities to take a big risk have fetched him an enviable position today. Amazon Web Services (AWS) will remain unchallenged in near future.

Bezos established the ‘Blue Origin’, a human space-flight start-up company in 2000. The objective of Blue Origin was to facilitate ‘space travel’, cost reduction and prioritise the safety factor.

Bezos made global headlines when he procured The Washington Post and other publications associated with The Washington Post Co in 2013. A year later, he removed the online paywall for subscribers of some local US newspapers.

Bezos was in the news when he announced a new experimental project, “Amazon Prime Air”. The project would develop ‘drones’- remote-controlled machines that would perform an assortment of human tasks.

Bezos and his company, Amazon.com is committed to climate change initiatives and research. The Company features charitable schemes on ‘disaster relief fundraising’ on its home page. Its features, “Wish List” and “Amazon Smile” facilitate non-profit donations. Amazon.com helps to sustain writers.

In 1999, Bezos received his first major award when Time named him Person of the Year. In 2008. he was selected by U.S. News & World Report as one of America's best leaders and was also awarded an honorary doctorate in science and technology from Carnegie Mellon University. He was a part of the Executive Committee of The Business Council for 2011 and 2012.

He shared the “Innovation Award” with Gregg Zehr for the Amazon Kindle, awarded to him by The Economist in 2011. Bezos was named Businessperson of the Year by Fortune 2012. Bezos is an active member of the Bilderberg Group.

He was ranked the best-performing CEO in the world by Harvard Business Review. He has also figured in Fortune's list of 50 great leaders of the world for three straight years, topping the list in 2015.

In September 2016, Bezos received a $250,000 prize for winning the Heinlein Prize for Advances in Space Commercialization, which he donated to the Students for the Exploration and Development of Space. In February 2018, Bezos was elected to the National Academy of Engineering for "leadership and innovation in space exploration, autonomous systems, and building a commercial pathway for human space flight".

In March 2018, at the Explorers Club annual dinner, he was awarded the Buzz Aldrin Space Exploration Award in recognition of his work with Blue Origin.

He also received Germany's 2018 Axel Springer Award for Business Innovation and Social Responsibility. Time magazine named him one of the 100 most influential people in the world on five separate occasions between 2008 and 2018

He’s worth $187 billion and currently ranked at #1. Jeff Bezos is the world’s wealthiest person for the third year in a row, despite giving $36 billion worth of his Amazon stock to his ex-wife MacKenzie Bezos as part of their divorce settlement last summer. The e-commerce giant he runs has been in the spotlight amid the pandemic; it’s hiring 100,000 full- and part-time workers to help meet increased demand from consumers staying home and shopping online.