In the News–Sept. 19, 2013
Former Amazon CFO Joy Covey was killed in a bicycle crash Wednesday. Covey, 50, was reportedly struck while cycling on Skyline Boulevard in the mountains of San Mateo County. She leaves an eight-year-old son, Tyler, reported Yahoo Finance.
Covey dropped out of high school, went to Harvard Business School, and helped Jeff Bezos take Amazon public. She was Amazon.com’s CFO in its startup days and guided the company through its IPO. One of the first among women to make it big during the first Internet boom, Covey ranked No. 28 on Fortune’s Most Powerful Women in Business list in 1999.
In 2003, California State University made alum Covey a “Top Dog.” In their write up about her they said that three years after Covey arrived at Amazon, the company “had grown to a $2.5 billion sales rate and served 17 million customers.”
“Joy was an integral member of the leadership, recruiting and company-building team during this period, with primary responsibility for capital raising, investment community relationships and communications,” they added.
In 2000, the World Economic Forum selected Joy as one of one hundred “Global Leaders for Tomorrow.” The Forum of Women Entrepreneurs honored Joy in 2002 with its Entrepreneurial Achievement Award.
Joy earned her JD degree magna cum laude from Harvard Law School, and an MBA from Harvard Business School where she was a Baker Scholar (both degrees awarded 1990). Her BS in business administration was awarded summa cum laude from California State University, Fresno. Joy was placed second in the U.S. out of 73,000 people sitting for the CPA exam in November 1982.
Since leaving Amazon.com in 2000, Joy had focused her time on family, travel and outdoor interests in addition to her board and committee activities. She reputedly loved any kind of extreme sport.
