Amazon.com CEO Bezos ’86 delivers 2010 Baccalaureate address

Amazon.com founder and chief executive Jeff Bezos ’86 opened the University’s 263rd Baccalaureate address with a story from his childhood. After watching a public service announcement about the health effects of smoking, he calculated that his grandmother’s addiction would likely take nine years out of her life. But rather than praising him for his mathematical prowess, his grandmother burst into tears.

Shifting between personal and professional anecdotes, Bezos called upon members of the Class of 2010 to carefully consider their choices. An electrical engineering and computer science major, he addressed the graduating class on Sunday afternoon in the University Chapel.

“There is a difference between gifts and choices,” Bezos said, explaining that each member of the graduating class has the gift of cleverness, but that they will repeatedly have to choose whether to act with kindness.

Bezos argued that the choices graduating seniors make will be more influential than their natural abilities in determining the paths their lives will take.

“What choice will you make?” Bezos asked the class. “Will you give up or be relentless? Will you guard your heart or act on love? Will you be clever at the expense of others or will you be kind?”

He told each graduating senior to “build yourself a great story” and suggested that seniors make important decisions while imagining themselves recounting their lives at age 80.

Bezos said he pursued the riskier path in 1994 when, realizing the commercial potential of the Internet, he decided to found Amazon.com, an online bookstore that could house more products than brick-and-mortar locations.

At the time he made his decision, Bezos had just married MacKenzie Bezos ’92 and was working at the high-powered hedge fund D.E. Shaw. Bezos’s boss attempted to dissuade him from leaving his traditional career path to pursue the online venture because it was “a great idea for someone who doesn’t already have a great job.”

Bezos disagreed.

He launched Amazon.com in 1995 as a bookstore but has since greatly diversified the products it offers. The site now sells goods ranging from movies to clothing and is currently the largest online retailer in the United States. One of the signature products offered by Amazon.com is the Kindle DX e-reader, which several classes at the University tested earlier this school year to mixed reception from students.

In her introduction of Bezos, President Shirley Tilghman paid credence to the high-profile status of his company.

“It’s hard to imagine life without Amazon.com,” she said.

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Maia McWilliams ’10 agreed with the sentiments expressed in Bezos’s speech.

"I think he correctly pointed out that it is our choices that determine whether or not we succeed in life — our willingness to try new things or take chances and not rely solely on the things we are given to make a difference."