Jeff Bezos

Jeff Bezos married MacKenzie Tuttle in 1993. He met her when he joined the investment firm D.E. Shaw. They live in Seattle with their four children, and are increasingly involved in philanthropic activities.

Bloomberg Billionaires Index listed Bezos as one of the wealthiest people in the world with an estimated net worth of $28 billion. Harvard Business Review ranked him the second best CEO in the world.

Jeff Bezos was born on January 12, 1964 to Jacklyn Gise and Ted Jorgensen. His mother’s ancestors were settlers who lived in Texas, and had acquired a 25,000-acre ranch near Cotulla over the generations.

Bezos’ mother was a teenager when she married his father. After marriage with Ted Jorgensen ended, she married Miguel Bezos, a Cuban immigrant who studied at the University of Albuquerque.

After marriage, Miguel Bezos legally adopted Jeff. The family then moved to Houston, Texas, where Miguel became an engineer for Exxon. Jeff attended River Oaks Elementary School, Houston, from fourth to sixth grade.

Bezos family moved to Miami, Florida. He attended Miami Palmetto Senior High School. He also attended the Student Science Training Program at the University of Florida, and received a Silver Knight Award in 1982.

While in high school, he started his first business venture, the Dream Institute, an educational summer camp for fourth, fifth and sixth graders. He graduated as high school valedictorian.

In 1982, he entered Princeton University, where he studied computers. He was elected to the honor societies Phi Beta Kappa and Tau Beta Pi at Princeton.

He used to take up summer jobs. In June 1984, he took a summer job as Programmer/Analyst in Norway, and the following year, he improved an IBM Program in California.

He served as the President of Princeton’ Students for the Exploration and Development of Space. In 1986, he graduated summa cum laude, with a B.Sc. in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.

Bezos has played a seminal role in the development and growth of e-commerce. He founded Amazon.com, an online book store, in 1995. The company has ushered revolution in online shopping by introducing innovative features, such as one-click shopping, customer reviews, and e-mail order verification.

In 2004, he founded Blue Origin, an aerospace company that is developing technologies to offer space travel to customers, kept a secret until land was purchased to build a launch and test facility.