Early life and background
Bezos was born Jeffrey Preston Jorgensen in Albuquerque, New Mexico, to Jacklyn Gise Jorgensen and Ted Jorgensen. His maternal ancestors were settlers who lived in Texas, and over the generations had 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 most summers of his youth, working with his grandfather at the enormously varied tasks essential to the operation.At an early age, he displayed a striking mechanical aptitude – as a toddler, he tried dismantling his crib with a screwdriver.Early life and background
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 Bezos was born in Cuba, immigrated to the United States alone at age 15, 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 in Houston from 4th to 6th grade.
Bezos showed intense and varied scientific interests at an early age. He rigged an electric alarm to keep his younger siblings out of his room and maintain his privacy. He converted his parents' garage into a laboratory for his science projects. 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; which helped him receive a Silver Knight Award in 1982. He entered 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 degree in electrical engineering and computer science.
Career
After graduating from Princeton University in 1986, Bezos worked on Wall Street in the computer science field.Then he worked on building a network for international trade for a company known as Fitel. He was next employed at Bankers Trust, where he became a vice-president. Later on he also worked in computer science for D. E. Shaw & Co.
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 and originally setting up the company in his garage. His work with Amazon eventually led him to become one of the most prominent dot-com entrepreneurs and a billionaire. In 2004, he founded a human spaceflight startup company called Blue Origin.
Bezos' salary as CEO for 2010 was only $81,840, in addition to the $1.6 million cost of his personal security detail.[8] He owns 20% of Amazon's stock and foregoes stock options.
Bezos is known for his attention to business-process details. As described by Condé Nast's 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."
Recognition
He was named Time magazine's Person of the Year in 1999. In 2008, he was selected by U.S. News & World Report as one of America's Best Leaders. Bezos was awarded an honorary doctoratein Science and Technology from Carnegie Mellon University in 2008.
He is also a member of the Bilderberg Group and attended the Swiss 2011 Bilderberg conference in St. Moritz, Switzerland.
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