Innovating Leadership:
Co-Creating Our Future

Resources:

Our host Maureen Metcalf posts a newsletter every week on LinkedIn. You can subscribe here.

Maureen’s latest book is Innovative Leadership & Followership in the Age of AI. Find details about the book here, or check out the Kindle version. The audiobook is also available.

Her other 10 books are available on Amazon here.

Books we’re reading for fun or personal development right now include:

• Take Back Your Power: 10 New Rules for Women at Work by Ancestry CEO Deb Liu, on how to overcome the obstacles women still face in the workplace – especially in tech. It’s in Hardback, and audio.
• Covert Cows and Chick-fil-A by Steve Robinson; it’s available in hardback, on Kindle, and Audiobook.
• The War of Art by Steven Pressfield. Paperback,  Kindle, and audiobook.
• Everyday Ubuntu: Living Better Together, the African Way by Mungi Ngomane. Hardback and audiobook.

NOTE: As an Amazon partner, we may make a small commission from books you buy through these links.

Other episodes you’ll enjoy:

– Africa’s EU Ambassador Redefines Leadership: How You Have Global Impact with Cynthia Cherrey
– Cooperation, Leadership & Empathy: George Papandreou’s Path for Meeting Challenges with George Papandreou
– Former Prime Minister Papandreou’s Path to a Just World with George Papandreou

Guest(s):

Guest(s) Bio:

Udit Madan, VP of Worldwide Operations, oversees fulfillment, transportation, and last-mile delivery operations. Udit joined Amazon in 2008 as a Software Development Engineer, building technology to automate and scale the company’s fulfillment network. Over the years, he has led numerous R&D initiatives, introducing robotics and automated control systems. In 2015, he transitioned to the Last Mile Technology team, where he developed key programs for Amazon’s delivery services. Udit also played a crucial role in Amazon’s COVID-19 operations response. He earned degrees in Computer Science and Economics from the University of Texas and was born and raised in India before moving to the U.S. in 2004.

Jamil Ghani, VP of Worldwide Prime, leads Amazon Prime globally, overseeing product, technology, marketing, decision science, operations, and finance teams that drive the membership’s growth and success. Under his leadership, Prime membership has tripled, and per-member spending has doubled, with new benefits added across categories such as healthcare, grocery, and food delivery. Before joining Amazon in 2017, Jamil was Senior Vice President of Enterprise Strategy, Digital & Innovation at Target, where he played a key role in revitalizing Target.com and launching new customer experiences. Jamil also held leadership roles at The Walt Disney Company, General Mills, and The Boston Consulting Group. He holds a BA in Economics and Computer Science from Harvard College and an MBA from Harvard Business School, where he was named a Baker Scholar.

Sarah Rhoads, VP of Workplace Health & Safety, oversees Amazon’s global health and safety programs, managing a team of over 9,000 professionals dedicated to the well-being of more than 1 million employees. Sarah joined Amazon in 2011 as an Operations Manager and has since held various leadership roles, including Director of Amazon Air. In her role at Amazon Air, she built the company’s air-haul network from scratch, growing it into a global operation with nearly 100 aircraft. A former U.S. Navy fighter pilot, Sarah flew F/A-18 jets and completed over 250 carrier landings. She holds a BS in Mechanical Engineering from the U.S. Naval Academy and a Master’s in National Security and Strategic Studies from the U.S. Naval War College.

Transcript
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Maureen: [00:00:00] This is innovating leadership, co creating our future. I’m your host, Maureen Metcalf, founder and CEO of the Innovative Leadership Institute, where we help leaders become future ready. We have a triple header today as we explore different aspects of Amazon’s leadership. Former Navy fighter pilot, Sarah Rhoads.

Lead safety initiatives while Jamil Ghani spearheads the prime program, but first Amazon’s vice president of worldwide operations, Udit Madan joins me to discuss the latest innovations from the company and provide a framework for the other leaders we will hear from. These interviews were recorded at Amazon’s Delivering the Future event, October 2024 in Nashville, Tennessee.

Udit: Udit, welcome. Thank you so much for joining us. Lauren, thank you so much for having me. I’m [00:01:00] really

Maureen: excited to have this conversation. So let’s jump right in. What did you announce today that you would like to share with our podcast listeners?

Udit: Today was a really exciting day across Amazon. We made so many different announcements, but the one that, you know, is really close to me is we announced the world’s most advanced e commerce facility.

This is a facility that represents a 12th generation of fulfillment centers. It has 10 times the amount of robotics and automation than our current generation. We just launched the first site in Shreveport, Louisiana, opened its doors a few days ago. It’s going to be home to 2, 500 employees, and it’s just backed from one end to the other with AI, including generative AI.

It’s really powering a completely new suite of robotics and automation for these facilities. I’m really excited about is that this facility is going to completely change the experience both for our teams and enable us to innovate for customers. There’s a lot to be really excited about from the technology to the actual impact that these facilities will drive.

But this is one of the range of announcements we made today. [00:02:00] Let’s talk about the impact.

Maureen: It’s cool to do a lot of new robotic stuff and a lot of new AI stuff. My guess is that you had a very significant ROI on customer impact and people. So let’s talk about what drives that thinking and what it actually looks like.

Udit: Yeah, I’ve been at Amazon for 16 years and you know, in that time I’ve had a chance to be at a lot of sites, talk to more than 1 million team members. And I always learn from them and actually their feedback is what drives a lot of the inspiration behind the innovation we do. And it’s no different in this particular case.

So the impact really for us with this new generation of technology, CI generation of buildings really starts from our employees. And the first thing that this new facility is going to allow us to do is really provide a much safer environment for all of our teams. It’s going to help us build meaningfully on the 30 percent improvement we’ve made in safety improvements over the last several years.

Bye. Making the actual physical work in these buildings a lot more ergonomically better, as well as by actually reducing the [00:03:00] amount of heavy lifting that our teams have to do within these facilities. Second, each of these facilities will create 2, 500 new jobs. And what’s really exciting is that it’s going to accelerate the creation of much more technical roles across mechatronics, reliability engineering.

We’re actually going to create 30 percent more roles. Then our current generation of facilities and then on the customer side, these facilities actually going to allow us to process customer orders about 25 percent faster. And what’s exciting about that is that it actually allows us to offer a lot more selection for same and next day delivery.

Had delivery speeds have been a focus for us because we know how much customers just love that experience of able to buy something and have it at their door a few hours later. And so they’re really excited about with this particular generation of buildings. And then finally, this is also a facility that allow us to be more efficient and will help us reduce our cost to serve by 25%.

It’s savings that we can invest back into customers either to new experiences, greater selection, or just better pricing.

Maureen: I really appreciate the [00:04:00] comprehensiveness with which you and Amazon approach this kind of investment because my assumption is it’s a huge investment.

Udit: It’s a combination of over three or four years of work across hundreds of teams.

It really starts from being able to try and understand how we can continue to innovate and push the boundary. We’ve, you know, had deep investments in AI over the last two decades, but this really is our boldest and biggest investments and really has been spurred by the rapid advancements in generative AI.

And I think, you know, it’s going to be, you know, Experience we think both our employees will love and I think the resulting customer experience will be something that customers will love as well.

Maureen: Let’s unpack a little bit how generative AI informs how you operate because we hear all these stories. Some are fabulous.

We’re gonna never have diseases again. The flip side is the Terminator will kill us all. So what is Amazon doing to really play on the side of? The world will be much better when we leverage technology [00:05:00] responsibly.

Udit: So I started as a software engineer in the company 16 years ago. And so I’ve been really close to the technological journey that the company’s taken.

And really, even when I started, AI was already pretty pervasive across the company, across a lot of things that we did. Today, it’s really present in almost every aspect of the business from what customers see on the website to how we operate to even sort of our big investments in AWS. It’s not new for us.

The thing that I think distinguishes Amazon is that we’ve always taken a customer backwards approach. How do we use technology to make the lives of customers better? How do we create new experiences and customers here could be end customers for our operating teams. It could be our team members in facilities like the one we announced today.

We’ve focused on trying to take technology and build practical, real world solutions that are making the lives of an end user or our team members better. That’s, I think, what you see the result of. A lot of customers today, shopping on Amazon, probably don’t realize it, but a lot of their experience [00:06:00] is actually driven by AI, and increasingly driven by more and more the usage of AI.

From delivery promises that customers see, The website to the review summarization. So if you go to a detailed page today and you see customer reviews, you know, two years ago, you’d have to dig through those reviews, probably read 10 or 20 of them to form an opinion. Today, a journey of AI is used to provide a very succinct summary that cuts out time and allows customers to find the right product for them really quickly.

Similarly, we’ve just announced an AI shopping guide. That’s going to help people who are new to categories actually find the right product fit for them. This is something that’s always taken place and it’s just increasingly. Present in the experience customer to see similarly in our operations. 75 percent of all global orders today are in one shape or form.

Actually, robotics assisted deliveries and robotics is increasingly using AI to enable those deliveries to happen at the speed and quality that we’re able to deliver for customers. And then you look at AWS, we made some really big investments in [00:07:00] services like Bedrock that are now increasingly gaining adoption across enterprises and small businesses alike.

And what’s really amazing about a service like Bedrock is that Bedrock is a service that really allows anybody to sort of use generative AI foundational models to build applications at scale and effectively create a applications. great experience just as we do for our own customers or build their own foundational models and large language models if they want to really build something that’s very custom to them.

And you know, we’re seeing increasing adoption of services like Bedrock that really show how not only can deliver great customer experiences ourselves, but also enable other businesses to do the same.

Maureen: With all of this use of generative AI, I assume you need to upskill your employees. What kind of an investment are you making to ensure you have the right talent?

Udit: It’s a great question and one that’s really close to my heart. As we’ve seen, the increasing technological advances, you know, have been happening for a long time. Having been part of that, the thing [00:08:00] I’ve learned is that one of the best things you can do as a business today is to invest in your employees, especially in a world of generative AI.

It’s absolutely both necessary and one of the best strategies that any company can take. And at Amazon, we’ve had many programs for many years now that have been really aimed squarely at that, starting with a program that we launched several years ago called Cure Choice. It offers. Upscaling opportunities to all of our global employees, about 750, 000 sort of full time employees in our operations teams.

Including pre ping for college tuition. And we have 20, 000 of those employees that, you know, right now are using Career Choice to help get an advanced degree. Similarly, we have a program called the Upskilling Pledge. That’s investing 1. 2 billion in helping over 300, 000 employees sort of upskill, learn new skills, and advance their careers.

And we think that’s just pretty amazing. It’s part of what will enable us to help our teams continue to both have the opportunity as well as the ability to [00:09:00] really advance along with the technology advancements that are taking place. It’s

Maureen: amazing as we think about for people who don’t necessarily have the resources to get to college, and they come to work for Amazon and find career paths open to them that just weren’t available to them.

Udit: Yeah, it is one of the things that for me is the greatest privilege of being in this role is being able to meet employees and meet our frontline employees who are taking advantage of these programs and just hearing from them how it’s changing their lives. These opportunities are providing access to education in a way that they otherwise would not be able to get and they’re both grateful for it.

And I’m really encouraged and excited of how many employees are actually making use of these programs.

Maureen: Let’s combine that then with the discussion about wage increases, because this really is changing the direction of a generation. So can you tell us about the wage increases and what is the thinking behind that?

Udit: Yeah, about two weeks ago, we announced our largest wage increase in the company’s history. [00:10:00] We announced that we’re investing 2. 2 billion here in the U. S. to increase wages for our team members across our fulfillment and transportation operations. It’s going to take the average total compensation package in the U.

1. here for our front line teams to 29 an hour when you include the value of the benefits that we provide. We do, you know, our wage reviews and make wage investments almost on an annual basis. And, To me, it’s a reflection of the work that they’re doing and the importance that they have in delivering the customer experience that Amazon does and the customer experience that our customers love.

Maureen: It certainly does show the interlink between employee satisfaction and customer experience.

Udit: Yeah, we’re, first, at least I personally, you know, find the work that our team is doing absolutely amazing. You know, they’re really the heart of customer experience. It’s the work that both our teams and facilities around the world do, our partners do, that really brings that experience to life.

It enables what really customers see at the end of the day, which is a package at their doorstep. And [00:11:00] ensuring that they have both a safe working environment and the experience that they enjoy every day is something that we really think is an investment that we’re going to continue to make. It’s also, for us, something that we strive to continue to improve.

And so that’s the way we’re going to keep approaching it. Tell me a little bit about

Maureen: you and your philosophy as a leader.

Udit: Yeah, as I mentioned a little bit earlier, I have been at Amazon for 16 years. I started out as a software engineer, really a frontline software engineer, and happened to start in operations.

It was a little bit by chance that I started in operations, but it was very quick for me to realize that the marriage of people Process and technology was where I was meant to be. And I really start with people there because I think that is what has both excited me, energized me and continues to excite and energize me every day.

And the way that I approach my job, which I feel very privileged to be in is really about being in service to the teams that are really [00:12:00] making it happen every day. It’s why we focus on ensuring the technologies we’re launching and we’re building are ones that are going to drive a better experience for those employees.

It’s why we think about investments we make in programs like your choice and benefits on wages. That’s really where it all starts from for me and in my role. And that’s something that’s been true when I was a lot earlier in my career and stays true today.

Maureen: One of Amazon’s commitments is community. And I assume you live that commitment personally.

What does that

Udit: look like for you? Part of being in operations is that you have a very broad footprint. Not only are we serving customers, we’re also serving communities because we operate all around the world. And really, to be successful, it’s not just about our facilities being successful, but it’s also the communities around those facilities being successful.

So we’ve invested both in building deep relationships with the communities we’re operating in, supporting them, whether that’s through investing in schools and other development programs that are important to each of [00:13:00] those communities, Or even things like ensuring we’ve got the ability to use the logistics network that we’ve built for good when we need to.

We have programs that help aid in delivering food to those that need it. And we have a large network of disaster relief hubs around the world, not really 14 of them, that also use a logistics network in times like today, where you’ve got a fairly large widespread impact from things like hurricanes. And it’s something that we have, again, felt very passionate about, and it’s very deeply rooted in our culture.

Maureen: And it’s a personal question. You have a big role and I’m assuming it takes a lot of hours, you work hard. How do you recharge and stay fresh so you can be your best self on difficult days?

Udit: Yeah, it’s a great question. It’s changed a lot over the last 16 years. I’m a really big reader of fiction. I watch sports over weekends, but these days I have two really young kids at home.

I’ve got a one year old and a four year old at home. [00:14:00] And so there’s nothing better than going home to them, spending the weekend with them, and that keeps me plenty energized and, you know, makes me really optimistic about the future.

Maureen: That’s really exciting. Thank you. Amazon’s making a lot of innovations.

You’ve talked about launching the 12th generation facility in Shreveport. What are the other innovations that you’re really proud of?

Udit: There’s a lot happening across the company and, you know, just today we announced a few innovations that I’m really excited about. First, you know, we’re investing in growing our pharmacy business.

We’re going to launch our pharmacies in 20 new cities around the country. If you’re like me and really hates waiting in line or waiting a full day to get your prescriptions, These investments are going to allow us to offer same day delivery for pharmacies to millions of customers around the country.

That’s one I’m really excited about and one I think is going to really change the experience that customers have in that space. The second, uh, that we’re getting really excited about is our investments in grocery. We’re beginning to really start launching a new [00:15:00] experience for customers that allows them to order groceries with everything else.

And so, if you want to order bananas, uh, your favorite pancake mix, or even, you know, get that iPad that’s on deal, you can get it all together in a single order. And that’s taking a completely different way of thinking about fulfilling groceries, and one of the really interesting innovations. For And then the final one that I’ll touch on is one that’s really close to my heart, given the amount of time I spent in transportation, and a good example of how we focus on continuing to improve the experience for our team members and partners on a day to day basis.

Being in my transportation role a few years ago, I used to go out and deliver a delivery route every year or so, sometimes, you know, I try to do it every quarter. And one of the things that probably the hardest part of that job was to find the package once you were at a customer’s home. We just announced a brand new technology that’s based on AI and computer vision that we’re putting in the back of the vans that’s going to allow a driver to effectively be able to use the system to tell them exactly where the package they need to deliver [00:16:00] is.

It’s going to cut 30 minutes out of their delivery route. Drivers tell us that they feel like it takes, you know, what used to take, you know, a lot more effort down to a third of its previous effort. It’s a really exciting technology. It’s never been done before, especially in a vehicle. And it’s completely enabled because of the progress that we’re making in Journey of AI.

Maureen: It really does seem like you’re setting the standard across the industry globally for what’s possible.

Udit: Our general approach really worked backwards from what customers tell us that they want, or what our employees or team members are telling us where we can do better. And I think using technology in ways that can make a real practical difference to people’s lives is exciting, and I think it’s only going to accelerate from here.

Maureen: Thank you so much. As someone who loves technology, the idea that we use it to make people’s lives better is as good as it gets. Udit, thank you for all of your work.

Udit: Thank you so much for having me. It was a pleasure and I really enjoyed the conversation.

Maureen: Thank you. Likewise.[00:17:00]

Next, we move into specific leadership roles. Starting with Jameel Ghani, Vice President of Worldwide Prime for Amazon. He reveals the latest updates for Amazon Prime members, as well as his own leadership philosophy, and why he’s driven to pay it forward in service of others. Jameel, thank you so much for taking the time to talk to us.

Thank you for having me. Can you tell us about the Prime Big Deals Day

claim? Yes, absolutely. We kicked off the event yesterday. I’m really pleased to share with you that day one’s sales worldwide exceeded last year. So we’re off to really, really strong start. Some of the favorite categories our members are shopping include.

home beauty toys apparel. So we hope that members will enjoy today’s event. And in certain countries, Turkey, Singapore, Australia, the event will go on for six or seven days. So they get even more time to find all those needs and wants they need for their families.

Jamil: Can we lobby that [00:18:00] we get more days to?

Well, we’re taking petitions right now. Happy, happy to

take that into

Jamil: consideration.

Maureen: What does this mean for our listeners

Jamil: don’t know as much about the inner workings of the Prime? The Prime membership is

unique in that it’s a combination of savings, entertainment, and convenience all in one simple membership from shopping in our store to streaming on Prime video to listen to music on music and so much more.

As a big part of that, in fact, one of the top reasons members join the program and stay in the program is to take advantage of these member exclusive sales event. We probably all know the holiday we invented in mid summer called Prime Day, and we just celebrated our 10th year, and that was record breaking.

And now we thought that what better way to kick off the holiday season around the world than to have another Prime exclusive savings event in October, and that’s what’s going on right now. And so this is a time for our members to shop 35 categories from all grocery to health and [00:19:00] beauty to apparel to electronics, which we all start to think about this time of year and get great member exclusive pricing.

And so everybody’s trying to make a dollar stretch a little bit further these days. And so this event is a way for us to celebrate everything that is prime and everything that is our prime membership. So this is like an early Black Friday sale. You know, it’s a unique event in that it’s exclusive to prime members, you know, Black Friday, Cyber Monday, that’s for all customers.

So we like to think of this as a special thank you. To our prime members, but we do see that our members shop around the world. They shop for needs, health and beauty and consumables. Very, very popular, but they also focus on the want side, whether it’s early holiday shopping for kids and toys or something for themselves from apparel, you see kind of that full range of behaviors, but it is for our members exclusively.

And so that’s what makes it special.

Maureen: One of the other things that I know from my Prime membership is I get free shipping.

Yes.

Maureen: What are the updates to the shipping benefits?

We are delivering faster than we had in our [00:20:00] entire history. Prime will celebrate 20 years. It’s hard to believe it. But next year, early next year, will be the 20th year.

Prime started in 2005 in the U. S. exclusively with a very simple promise. We took just about everything Amazon sold at that time, 1 million items. It was available in two days for free. You fast forward today and there are over 300 million items available for free Prime shipping in the U. S. Tens of millions of those are available today or tomorrow.

That’s like 20 times a selection available at twice the speed than when we launched the program originally. And so across 120 cities across the country, you can get basically all your needs and wants fulfilled as quickly as this very day. So. You know, for me with a busy household with three young daughters, like my wife and I remember things throughout the day that we need to help keep our busy household moving and the fact that it can be at our doorstep at 5 30 when we get home and start the evening family routine is magical

Maureen: to make that happen.

That means [00:21:00] distribution centers are placed differently. Forecasting is done differently. The whole logistics behind allowing me to get My apple cider vinegar today. Millions of people are functioning to ensure that my requests are met. Can you talk a little bit about from a logistics perspective? What’s required to make this possible?

I think the first thing that say is that this is not something that occurred in the last three months, six months, even a year. This builds on the legacy of innovation in our operations and our supply chain. in partnership with our vendors and sellers, but all the way into our buildings, how we inbound inventory, how we process in the building, and then certainly how we outbound and come to your doorstep or to your office.

And so it’s kind of that continuous improvement over decades that has gotten us to this point. But in particular, in the last two or three years, we’ve regionalized our entire network, moving from one national network to regional networks across the United States and in most countries around the world, which places the [00:22:00] right item closer to the member or the customer than ever before.

So that allows us to process in the building, just like we have on all of that decades of innovation. And But the key difference is that products are traveling fewer miles over the roads to get to customers because that product starts much closer to my home or to my office. And so we’re really proud that our associates work no faster or no harder than ever before because we’ve streamlined those operation with safety being the primary focus.

What’s really different is that we’re spending less time carrying that item over the roads to your house. And that just makes it so you can get your apple cider vinegar when you need it, you know, by tonight.

Maureen: supply chain optimization. And one of the things I think many of us don’t think about when we order our product is the volumes of data that go into forecasting, analytics and then how you place orders and ship to the fulfillment centers.

Can you say a little bit about economic data and [00:23:00] analysis and how the analytics drive

We have the benefit of a broad and diverse customer base that’s constantly teaching us about what those needs and wants are. And so we feed that information into making the customer experience better. Part of the way we make the customer experience better is by making sure our supply chain is as efficient as possible.

What does that mean for customers? That means that you can get your apple cider vinegar when you need it without compromise, but also helps us drive costs out of the system. And that cost allows us to have the lowest prices to our customer. And it just fuels kind of a goodness for the customer, which is also, you know, candidly good for our business as well.

The other thing that it helps us understand is what do members want to need? So if I think about Prime Big Peel days going on right now, We have invested to personalize that experience. So while we might have millions of deals available, it’s really about knowing you really well and presenting the handful of deals that are just gonna feel like a [00:24:00] wow.

They really know me and then they’re serving me that way. And so the data makes us more efficient from a supply chain, but it also makes sure that we have the right customer experience for our prime members.

Maureen: Because I often have Amazon open on my computer, um, I am curious to see what recommendations I get today for prime big deal days.

So let’s test this because I was thinking about generators with the recent hurricanes. I get a bunch of generators and interestingly, no vinegar. Oh, yeah, but then we get into the workout clothes. Yeah, so it does do exactly as you said that analytics and one of the things you highlighted in the conversation this morning is the usefulness of getting the things that I 300 million products.

I want to look at 25 and see that my 25 things that I buy

a great another example in that is we have been applying AI progressively across our business for years, right? It is not a new [00:25:00] thing. And so in prime, that means us customizing how we introduce you to benefits or get you to engage with benefits because there’s new content to watch on prime video or new.

Your favorite artists streaming on Amazon music or, you know, something for sale during a prime big deal days. But we’re also investing in making the shopping experience more simple and seamless for customers. One of my favorites is the AI summaries for reviews. I’m a passionate about reviews and reviews from folks like me who have purchased similar products that hold a lot of credibility for me.

But I’m also really excited about the AI buying guides. There’s some categories where you feel like you spend as much time researching the purchase as you do actually using the item once you finally buy it. And we’re trying to make that process much, much easier for our customers, ultimately making sure that our vast selection serves the purpose of a household because a household doesn’t need 300 million items.

Household needs X number of items to make life simple. And while there are certainly occasions where [00:26:00] shopping is a pastime, I know in our household with three kids under eight years old, it’s a need, right? It’s we have a need and we want to close that loop to that need being fulfilled as quickly as possible.

And we’re applying AI smartly to help make that easier for our members.

Maureen: So you do that through reviews, through buyer’s guide. So if I’m going to buy a television, it will help me understand because I don’t buy TVs that often. That’s right. and customer recommendations. So it’s personalized.

That’s right.

Yeah. Customer recommendations. And that goes from physical products. You might want to buy to content. You might want to watch her podcast. You might want to stream all included with your prime membership. Prime is unique in that respect in that it brings together so many different parts of the average households, kind of where you spend your time.

Where you have needs and wants where you might be facing some friction that Prime is trying to come in and take away. And so we’re really focused on adding more and more value to the membership every single day. So, you know, good case in point is Amazon doesn’t deliver food. But we [00:27:00] partnered with one of the best in class delivery services with Grubhub.

And now at no additional cost in your membership, you get free Grubhub Plus, which entitles you to 0 delivery. For restaurants all across the country. And so last night I arrived here in Nashville and I had work to do. And so I’m sitting in my hotel, but I didn’t want to miss out on the cuisine. Found one of the top restaurants in Nashville, had it delivered via GrubHub directly to my hotel room.

And so like, that’s all Prime made that possible. I didn’t have to worry about it. It’s super simple. I can even order within the app itself. I didn’t even have to go to another app. So

Jamil: another thing I can use prime for. There you go. I’m doing door to door encounters here. Just telling everybody about all the value they get from prime.

So Jamil, tell me a little bit about you as

Maureen: a leader. This is a big role. And I’ve noticed about all of the Amazon leaders. highly competent and they seem like really good people. They’ve got families that they seem very dedicated to and they appear to live the commitments of, we value our people, we value our customers, we [00:28:00] value our community.

Tell me a little bit about you as an individual leader. How did you get to become the person you are? Some people evolve to high roles. What sets you apart?

I don’t know if it sets me apart, but my personal story is deeply rooted in my family origin. So I’m the first one in my family to go to college. My mom immigrated from Cuba and my dad immigrated from Pakistan.

And so I really kind of go back to that foundation and what is really defined for me, my three things. My three things professionally have, and it’s not like I set out knowing this, but I’ve learned this about myself. I love serving everyday people. I feel a lot of pay it forward debt because a lot of people have invested in me and made it possible for me to get here.

And we’re not for. The teacher who sat down with my parents and explained what applying to college was because they had no idea. And I had no idea to the person who gave me my first internship opportunity to the person who hired me first time out of college and on and on and on. I wouldn’t be here. So I feel a [00:29:00] big obligation to pay it forward.

And I do that by working on businesses that serve everyday people. And, you know, we have over 200 million households and you can calculate how many humans that actually is. And so I feel like every day I get to serve a big portion of the world’s population through Amazon Prime. The second thing is I’m very much about the new and the next.

I feel like we live in a blessed time. We’re so much is changing and we have a responsibility to change it for the positive. And so I feel like through technology and operations and all the things we’ve been talking about this morning. We have the opportunity to make a big dent in the universe for the positive.

And so helping invent the new and the next is how I do that. And then the last thing is I played soccer growing up through college and I like winning together. And so it’s shaped me as a leader where I try to be an empathetic leader who raises the bar and helps people grow beyond what they thought possible because that’s what people help me do.

And so those are my three things and that’s how I think I ended up here.

Maureen: Thank you, Jamil. Thank you for making a big dent in the universe. Not only [00:30:00] through the work that you do with Prime, but through the human you are. And all the people you touch.

I appreciate that. Thank you.

Maureen: We close this episode with Sarah Rhoads, a former F/A-18 fighter pilot, who is now Amazon’s vice president of workplace health and safety. As she talks with me about her leadership journey, you’ll understand why she is so passionate about workplace health.

Sarah, I want to start with who are you and how did you get to health and safety? Why is this so important?

Sarah: Oh, well, thank you very much for the question. Thank you for hosting me today. Who am I? Well, I’m originally from Montana. When I was about seven years old, my folks took me to an air show. It’s at that moment in time that I knew that I wanted to fly jet aircraft when I grew up.

So one thing led to another. I was fortunate enough to go to the Naval Academy. I studied mechanical engineering, went to flight school, and achieved my childhood dream of becoming a pilot. Taking off and landing on, uh, nuclear powered aircraft carriers in the middle of the [00:31:00] ocean. So, just really fortunate that all worked out and there came a point where I had to make a decision whether I would stay in and continue a career in the Navy or go do something else.

So I actually chose kind of the best of both worlds. I went into the reserves. So I thought if Uncle Sam needs me, he can call me up. But in the meantime, I was ready to see what else was out there. And long story short, Amazon was one of the companies that reached out to me. So I just happened to receive an email one day thinking that maybe you was soliciting some feedback on a recent purchase I’d made.

Little did I know that it was, you know, maybe asking if I’d be interested in pursuing a career in operations with Amazon. And so as I learned more about it, I recognized that Amazon’s culture seemed very translatable with, The culture that I’d come from in the Navy. And so I pursued a career with Amazon and I started out in operations.

So leading fulfillment operations in the U. S. and spent some time in the U. K. as well. So I did that for about six years. And then when I returned to the U. S. We were really building out our transportation network, and it was also a time that we recognized if we were going to continue pursuing two day [00:32:00] delivery or less, we would need aircraft to help facilitate that.

And so, leveraging, you know, aviation background and engineering background, Amazon operations experience, some leadership experience, I raised my hand and was lucky enough to have the privilege of building out an air haul network and a team to do that for six years. And so I kind of completed that mission, so to speak.

There was an opportunity to then transition to leading our global workplace health and safety organization. And I think about the opportunity to translate the focus on safety that I had as an aviator and how we prioritize and proactively address safety. Because in aviation, the consequences can be quite high, but the margin for error is very small.

And I just saw a great way to hopefully translate some of those skills to Amazon. And so I took on leading our global workplace health and safety team and organization and to be able to have such a broad impact, first of all, our people for the organization, I just found it to be, you know, what could be really rewarding opportunity.

So that was really kind of the motivation and the timing behind it, much like a lot of things in life, [00:33:00] timing is, you know, a big factor, but. It’s been fantastic being able to work with our engineers to help engineer out issues before they become an issue. I enjoy working with our large teams of people. I enjoy figuring out how to apply technology to safety and operationalize safety.

So I find all those things really motivating and I enjoy it. I can say to this day, even after 13 years at Amazon, I get excited when I go into work every day.

Maureen: Tell me about Amazon’s commitment

Sarah: to keeping their employees safe. Safety is our top priority. No, you heard me speak about it in my, my keynote this morning, the core and the foundation of everything we do, no matter how much technology we have or innovation, our people, our people are at the core of everything.

We have over 1. 1 million employees globally across all of our operations. And so that is really the foundation of what we do. And so if we don’t get safety, right, then we will fall short. And we don’t certainly don’t want to do that. Some of the very best suggestions for safety, safety, [00:34:00] improvement, safety, innovation actually comes from our frontline employees.

Nobody knows our operations better than the folks working on the front line. And so, we have a lot of feedback mechanisms and tools that our teams can use out in the field. And, you know, I see countless examples of different suggestions that are made to help either make the workplace even safer, or maybe a different way of doing something that makes it simpler for folks.

What’s the big goal? The big goal? I have Bold vision. And I’ve got the team behind it. It is to be the safest workplace within like industries. I want us to be the best in the world when it comes to workplace safety. And so if anybody were to ever ask who does safety the best, I want that answer to be Amazon.

And we’re on our way. We still have some work to do, but we’re on the right path. I’m so excited about the progress that we’ve made. I’m so excited about the progress that we continue to make. We’ve got a lot of momentum. We’ve got people bought in, you know, and like I mentioned, we’re taking this very proactive approach to safety.

One of the best parts about this is that, you know, open dialogue with our employees and getting that [00:35:00] feedback and those ideas. What are the six pillars? Yeah, the six pillars, you know, if we think about how large our organization is, And all the work that we need to continue to do on a daily basis, even if we are the best in the world at safety, there’s always going to be work to do to be better and better every day.

And so we organize a very big effort into six pillars. So that’s kind of a very organized way to boil the ocean, so to speak. Otherwise, I don’t want to try to do a lot of things and not do anything well. We have a lot of things to do, but we want to nail everything and do everything well. So one pillar is data intelligence, making sure that we have the right insights that helps drive our programmatics.

A second pillar is ergonomics. You know, that’s one of the most common causes of workplace injury in most like industries. So we want to make sure that we’re nailing that. Third is technology. You a lot about that today. And even within the safety space, we’re using things like computer vision and AI to really lean in on that.

I think about risk reduction. That’s where we go in and retrofit facilities where we’ve [00:36:00] since developed new technologies so we can go in and maybe replace older technology or older types of processes with newer. Fifth is prevention through design. That’s where we work with the engineers, like I mentioned, and engineer out issues as far upstream as possible before they even launch in a new building, for example.

And then the sixth and most, you know, I think critical is the people and culture pillar. Like I mentioned, at the end of the day, you know, if we don’t have, uh, the culture right when it comes to safety, then, you know, we’re going to fall short and we don’t want that to happen. So, uh, people and culture, that’s, uh, that’s a really important pillar for us as well.

You know, you’ll hear a lot of companies say safety is our top priority. Well, we mean it and we think of like a generative safety culture. That’s actually a step even beyond proactive. Generative is simply how business is done. People don’t know any other way than having a safe work environment. And I know when I go into a building that they have an outstanding safety culture When I see our frontline employees holding themselves accountable for following safe processes and procedures, making sure they have the right PPE, for example, we have a bit of a [00:37:00] campaign, so to speak, called Safe2Go.

And you think about if you’re traveling back to your home, many people say, well, Maureen, have a safe trip, safe travels, fly safe. We have this mindset that we’ve really started leaning into this past year called Safe2Go. And so. Whether an employee is getting ready to start their work for the day, maybe as they go into a building, even as simple as getting in their own car to transit to and from work, like are you putting your seatbelt on?

And when you go into the building, do you have the right protective equipment if you need it for your particular work path? Is your station all set up? Is all of your equipment working? So thinking about these things throughout any given day and having that mindset, am I safe to go, number one, number Number two, are my colleagues safe to go?

And then number three for the leaders in the buildings, making sure that their teams are safe to go and making sure they have everything they need to perform their jobs safely. So it really is that mindset and that culture, and that doesn’t just happen overnight. It takes time. But it takes consistent messaging and reinforcement.

Maureen: In fact, I work with [00:38:00] clients in the manufacturing industry, and there are daily decisions. We didn’t get the thing calibrated, or we didn’t, whatever the challenge of the day is, and I need to make a decision. I, each of my client leaders, do we run the equipment today? Or do we have a down day because we’re missing a sensor or we’re missing a thing, right?

It is a daily hour to hour set of decisions about safety versus meeting our other objectives, right? And I know

Sarah: for some. That can be a tough decision to make sometimes. So what I reinforce to our teams is, you know, those are decisions that we don’t regret, you know, error on the side of caution, it’s, it’s better to take that one day or that one hour to fix whatever the issue is, because actually it could cause more problems later on.

One

Maureen: of the things in your keynote you talked about was that there was a visual of problems. Right. And that everyone is someone’s mother or father or sibling or best friend. It seems like that is the framing for, they’re not just numbers or staff, [00:39:00] they’re individual family members. Right. That you’re really caring for.

Sarah: Right. Safety is personal. It should be personal to all of us. You know, if everybody has somebody in one of those categories, whether it be a family member or a friend or a community, there’s some kind of dependency or reliance or just particular value in people. And so, You know, when we think about how personal safety is, that really resonates with people as well.

Maureen: I think I hear a theme all the way from seven year old Sarah to now of service. Right. That serving in a military role, serving in a safety role, you’re protecting and caring for people.

Sarah: Yeah, giving back, I think, number one, looking out for folks. Protecting, keeping people safe or out of harm’s way would be maybe another way to look at it as well.

And, uh, I do think in this particular role, leading Workplace Health and Safety for Amazon, you know, one of the largest corporations in the world, it is an opportunity to take all of those learnings over the course of a [00:40:00] career and almost a lifetime, And hopefully applying them in a way that does benefit such a large workforce that we truly, truly care about.

Maureen: What do you do as an individual leader to continue to grow and also keep yourself well?

Sarah: Well, to continue to grow, I love learning. I feel that I learn something new every day, whether it be. conversations that I have with different people or maybe there’s a new technology out there. I love visiting the field because I typically, even though I’ve spent a lot of time in operations, because the pace that we do innovate, I like to learn, uh, new things.

So I’m very kind of curious and inquisitive. Number one, for me personally, what do I do to keep well? Well, I enjoy the outdoors. You know, I think maybe being from Montana, it’s, it’s kind of a, Uh, natural for me. I have, you know, great friends and I think it’s really important to laugh as well. Don’t, don’t take yourself too seriously.

Putting all those things together hopefully helps keep me healthy physically and mentally and so I, uh, I can’t complain. Biggest accomplishment in life. I [00:41:00] think the best is yet to come. Brilliant.

Maureen: Hopeful.

Sarah: That’s the way I look at it. Thank

Maureen: you. We hope you found tips from our leadership journey. As you learned about the paths of these three leaders, our thanks to Amazon for inviting us to delivering the future.

Watch for our second episode from this event, when we’ll learn about sustainability and the leader who’s changing the face of the music industry. I’m Maureen Metcalf. Thank you for joining us.