Since Jeff Bezos stepped down last July, Andy Jassy has taken over as the new CEO of Amazon. He’s been challenged by slow profit growth, an Amazon Web Services (AWS) outage, and the company’s first union. But experts say he’s equipped to handle the challenges, just like his predecessor.
“Jassy knows how Jeff thinks, Jassy knows how to run a meeting like Jeff runs meetings, he knows how to drive a huge complex organization like Jeff does,” said Bezonomics author Brian Dumaine, during an interview with Yahoo News.
While he is relatively new to the CEO role, Jassy is not new to Amazon. He joined the company in 1997, when it was still selling books. He also trained under Bezos during a two year mentorship program.
Before leading the company, Jassy headed AWS, Amazon’s cloud computing platform and the company’s most profitable division. Though AWS isn’t without its challenges, Jassy had to discontinue its facial recognition software, ‘Amazon Rekognition’. The software was criticized for misidentifying people of color–an issue made worse after selling Rekognition to law enforcement agencies.
Like Bezos, Jassy has taken on projects outside of Amazon. While he’s not going into space anytime soon, he’s the chairman of a Seattle charter school and a part-owner of the NHL’s Seattle Kraken.