Jeffrey Preston Bezos

Founder, President and Chairmain of the Board. Began his career on Wall Street in the computer science field. Later, he built a network for international trade for the company, Fitel, and worked as a vice president for Bankers Trust. Was a financial analyst for D. E. Shaw & Co. before founding Amazon.com in 1994. After setting up the original company in his garage, his work eventually led him to become one of the most prominent dot-com entrepreneurs. 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. Amazon.com weathered financial ups and downs and expanded from selling books and CDs to other consumer goods. In 2000, he helped found Blue Origin, a side project whose goal is to build reusable rocket ships to encourage tourism in outer space. He built the world's largest and most successful e-commerce site, pioneered web services, and offered the first large-scale cloud computing turnkey systems that today power the backends of many conventional businesses around the world.