Jeff Wilke retired as Amazon’s CEO Worldwide Consumer in February 2021. During his more than 21 years as a corporate officer, he led Amazon’s retail and third-party stores, Whole Foods Market, operations, marketing, Prime, and technology teams. Jeff led the deployment of techniques from lean manufacturing to create the infrastructure and technology that became Amazon Prime. His teams launched Prime Video, Prime Now, Prime Day, Amazon Fashion, and many other customer-facing innovations. Jeff helped create Amazon’s corporate culture and mechanisms, including Amazon’s Leadership Principles.
Jeff is Chairman and co-founder of Re:Build Manufacturing, which aims to integrate new technologies with conventional manufacturing businesses to accelerate growth and performance. Over the coming decades, the company expects to create new U.S. factories employing thousands of Americans. Prior to Amazon, he was VP of pharmaceutical fine chemicals at AlliedSignal. He began his working career in software development at Andersen Consulting. Jeff earned an MBA and S.M in chemical engineering in 1993 from MIT’s Leaders for Global Operations (LGO) program. He also holds a BSE in chemical engineering, summa cum laude, from Princeton. He served as chairman of the governing board for LGO from 2010 through 2020. He currently serves on the board of Code.org.
When I assumed leadership of Amazon.com’s operations in 1999, we needed a playbook—and fast. Fortunately, I had the LGO playbook, and it worked.