Joy Covey (April 25, 1963 September 18, 2013) was an American business executive, best known as

Amazon Amazon most often refers to: * Amazons, a tribe of female warriors in Greek mythology * Amazon rainforest, a rainforest covering most of the Amazon basin * Amazon River, in South America * Amazon (company), an American multinational technology c ...

's first chief financial officer.

Early life and education

Covey was born in Boston, Massachusetts, and grew up in

San Mateo, California San Mateo ( ; ) is a city in San Mateo County, California, on the San Francisco Peninsula. About 20 miles (32 km) south of San Francisco, the city borders Burlingame to the north, Hillsborough to the west, San Francisco Bay and Foster C ...

. She dropped out of school at 15 and moved to

Fresno, California Fresno () is a major city in the San Joaquin Valley of California, United States. It is the county seat of Fresno County and the largest city in the greater Central Valley region. It covers about and had a population of 542,107 in 2020, makin ...

, and began working as a part-time grocery clerk. She later resumed her education and graduated from

California State University, Fresno California State University, Fresno (Fresno State) is a public university in Fresno, California. It is one of 23 campuses in the California State University system. The university had a fall 2020 enrollment of 25,341 students. It offers bachelo ...

with a B.S. in Business/Accounting in 1982. In 1989, she graduated from Harvard's J.D./M.B.A. program.

Career

Before Amazon

After graduating from

, she began her career as an accountant at Arthur Young LLP. After graduating from Harvard, Covey briefly joined Wasserstein, Perella in New York as an investment banker before joining a technology company called

Digidesign Avid Audio (formerly Digidesign) is an American digital audio technology company. It was founded in 1984 by Peter Gotcher and Evan Brooks. The company began as a project to raise money for the founders' band, selling EPROM chips for drum mach ...

. She helped take the company public and then sold it to another company called Avid, in Boston. In the mid-1990s, Covey moved back to Silicon Valley and interviewed at several promising companies like

Excite Excitation, excite, exciting, or excitement may refer to: * Excitation (magnetic), provided with an electrical generator or alternator * Excite Ballpark, located in San Jose, California * Excite (web portal), web portal owned by IAC * Electron ex ...

and

Marimba The marimba () is a musical instrument in the percussion family that consists of wooden bars that are struck by mallets. Below each bar is a resonator pipe that amplifies particular harmonics of its sound. Compared to the xylophone, the timbre ...

. It was then that she heard about Amazon.

Amazon

In 1996, Covey joined Amazon, shortly becoming the CFO and then Chief Strategy Officer and raising over $500 million for the company. In 1999 she was #28 on Fortune magazine's list of "Most Powerful Women in Business" She left Amazon voluntarily in 2000, it was said that she "was tired of frenetic internet life". ''Fortune'' Magazine said of her:

Other women on our list, like Amazon.com's Joy Covey, learned from mothers who gained strength through suffering. During
World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...
, Joan Covey, who is Dutch by heritage, lived in Indonesia (then the Dutch East Indies). When the Japanese invaded, she was sent to a prison camp for two years. She watched her own mother starve to death there. The hardship fostered an intense self-reliance, which daughter Joy has as well.

Personal life

Covey served as the treasurer of

Natural Resources Defense Council The Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) is a United States-based 501(c)(3) non-profit international environmental advocacy group, with its headquarters in New York City and offices in Washington D.C., San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago, Bo ...

before her death, and had a son, Tyler. Covey was also a pilot.

Death

Covey died when she was struck by a delivery van while cycling on a road in California on Sept. 18, 2013. Covey's collision with a delivery van was previously reported, but the BuzzFeed News-ProPublica report revealed for the first time on December 23, 2019, that the van was carrying Amazon packages. The driver was a subcontractor for OnTrac, which Amazon was employing at the time to deliver packages, according to the report.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Covey, Joy Businesspeople from Boston Women chief financial officers Amazon (company) people Road incident deaths in California 1963 births 2013 deaths Harvard Law School alumni Harvard Business School alumni American chief financial officers California State University, Fresno alumni 20th-century American businesspeople 20th-century American businesswomen Cycling road incident deaths 21st-century American women