Jeff Wilke, Longtime Amazon Executive And Bezos Confidant, Announces Retirement

Jeff Wilke, CEO of worldwide consumer for Amazon and a longtime confidant of founder Jeff Bezos, announced on Friday that he would be retiring from the company in the first quarter of 2021. Wilke, 52, joined the company in 1999 to handle global operations and rose to a prominent place in the e-commerce giant over the decades. Some had considered him a potential successor to Bezos if the CEO ever decided to step down.

In a staff-wide memo titled “Hanging up the flannel,” Wilke explained his motivation for taking an early retirement, right after seeing the company through the next holiday shopping season.

“Why leave? It’s just time. Time for me to take time to explore personal interests that have taken a back seat for over two decades,” Wilke wrote, also stating that currently has no intention of accepting another job after departing Amazon.

Wilke is set to be succeeded by Dave Clark, Amazon’s senior vice president of retail operations.

“Since Jeff joined the company, I have been lucky enough to have him as my tutor,” Bezos said about his longtime colleague. “Jeff’s legacy and impact will live on long after he departs. He is simply one of those people without whom Amazon would be completely unrecognizable.”

Wilke had been a part of Bezos’s S-Team, a close group of senior officials who report directly to Bezos and oversee major aspects of Amazon’s business, like advertising, cloud computing, operations, and retail. With Wilke departing, Amazon on Friday announced three new S-Team additions: Alicia Boler Davis, vice president of global customer fulfillment; John Felton, vice president of global delivery services; and Dave Treadwell, vice president of Amazon’s eCommerce Foundation.