Innovating Leadership:
Co-Creating Our Future

Resources:

Learn more about Amazon’s disaster relief work at https://bit.ly/AmazonRelief.

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. You’ll find details about it at https://bit.ly/LeaderInAI, or check out the Kindle version at https://amzn.to/44buVz8. The audiobook version is now available at  https://amzn.to/4dTCleZ.

Her other 10 books are available on Amazon here.

Other episodes you’ll enjoy:

– Tech with Purpose: Protecting People with Innovation with Aaron Parness & Beryl Tomay

– Our Emotional Recession: How to Lead When People Are Depleted with Josua Freedman

– Pets, Purpose, & Power: The Animal Science of Leadership with Rustin Moore, DVM

Guest(s):

Guest(s) Bio:

Bettina Stix founded Amazon’s disaster relief program in 2017. Her experience at Amazon spans more than 26 years, and she’s held leadership positions across international websites, customer service, and membership programs. Bettina now oversees Amazon’s volunteering, disaster relief, food security, and education impact programs, leveraging Amazon’s logistics and innovation and engaging employees to support communities worldwide. She serves on the board of Farestart, a Seattle nonprofit transforming homelessness and hunger into human potential. Stix holds a Ph.D. in comparative literature and a master’s degree in history from the University of Stuttgart, Germany.

Andrea Fava is Vice President, US Public Policy, for Amazon. In this role, she leads state and local public policy across the United States. Andrea has been at Amazon for nine years. Prior to joining Amazon, Andrea directed Intel’s global public policy in the areas of environment, employment, and human rights policy. She served as the Environmental Director for the U.S. Council for International Business, a trade advocacy organization, and a consultant for the United Nations Environment Programme. Andrea holds an MA in Political Science from the University of Wisconsin, where her research focused on African politics, and a BA from the University of Delaware.

Transcript
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Maureen: [00:00:00] Welcome, Bettina.

Bettina: Thank you. I’m ready.

Maureen: As George, our colleague would say, you have the best job at Amazon.

Bettina: I do.

Maureen: You’ve got all of the resources of one of the world’s largest companies at your disposal. Yeah. To help people in their most challenging times. Tell us a little bit more about that.

Bettina: Yeah, yeah. It’s a, I actually like to steal, um, the expression of, I stood on the shoulders of giants, um, from a former colleague of mine who started our fresh program, um, our online fresh program.

And that launched within three months. Um, and, uh, um, she gave a presentation and said like, how could this all happen? How could we launch in three months?

Maureen: Mm-hmm.

Bettina: And then she showed a slide of lots of. Work badges that, uh, people who were not on her team who have helped launch that program because they built the foundation for that.

And she said like, because we start stood on the shoulders of giants and this is [00:01:00] exactly how our disaster relief program works. And also kind of how I got to involved in this. Um, I got a call from two software engineers at Amazon in 2004, on December 26. That was the day. A, a tsunami rippled through the Indian Ocean, killed quarter million people.

one of the biggest disasters of that decade. Um, they called me and they said, we just used some defunct technology at Amazon, revived it and turned it into a donation button on our gateway page. This was before we had mobile, you know, we were just talking Amazon Gateway page. On your laptop, desktop.

Um, and they called me because I was, um, the manager in charge of our international websites and they said, can you help us bring this to our international websites? Um, I [00:02:00] assembled quickly a team, a couple of people that could help, um, transform these art or technology to work on international websites.

We put up the buttons. It took us about four days until the last country launched, I think. France was last, um, first uk, then de then France, then Japan, uh, Japan, then France. And uh, we collected $15 million total for the Red Cross on, be on behalf of our customers, um, for the Red Cross, which was huge back then.

It’s still a lot of money for a donation campaign. Um, and I reflected upon this. Some people told me, you look the happiest you were ever. And I said, like. And I slept three hours a night or something like that. There was a lot of com camaraderie, obviously, when we did all of this. But it also taught me this lesson that A, we’re a company of very, very passionate people who love to problem [00:03:00] solve for their communities, and it stayed with me throughout my then coming career.

I spend another eight and a half years at Prime where I got to know how really, if you look through the lens of a Prime customer. Anything you have at Amazon makes sense in some way to have some extra, um, uh, benefit for Prime members. So it was my job really to go around and ask businesses, how do we use Prime in your business?

What can you give Prime members, right? It’s an attitude, um, of really kind of seeing patterns of just working through understanding business models, understanding why, why it’s why our operations exist, how our. Work, et cetera, et cetera. Um, and, uh, so when, uh, um, in 2015, at that point, um, I was sort of like a little bit in a, in a crisis, um, personal crisis.

[00:04:00] My, my sister was terminally ill. Um, and I went on a, and I went on a leadership, uh, retreat, um, that was called lead like a river. Fortunately it’s on pause, but it’s the best thing I. I’ve ever did for myself. Um, it helped me get centered. It helped me understand, uh, what I am good at, and it helped me see what I did back then in 2004, was something that showed how I can help our communities best and I can help communities around the world Best by Helping to see what Amazon is good at, inspiring everybody else to rally around the cause and make it happen. And so disaster Relief was born in 2017. Um, it was also a year where we had a lot of natural disasters happen around the world. Um, three hurricanes in the us, an earthquake in Mexico, and an earthquake at the end of the year in, uh, in [00:05:00] Indonesia.

And in all of those moments, we were able to just like try. out what we had conceived that could be possible. We sent, uh, truckloads of relief items to George Brown Convention Center in the middle of, uh, uh, of Houston. We flew a plane, uh, first to Puerto Rico and then another two to, um, uh, the US Virgin Islands as they were recovering from Maria and Irma.

And we, again sent trucks in our first, uh, Mexican disaster where lots of our, um, uh, employees in Mexico City helped unpack and distribute all in one year. I thought like we would send maybe an air airplane in three years and it’s just happened because the moment, um, uh. You know, uh, such devastating disasters happen is really something where we come [00:06:00] together and, um, help with what we’re good at at MS Amazon.

Maureen: Beautiful.

George: Well, that’s, uh, as, as you said yesterday in the fireside chat, you take all that is Amazon and you bring it to an issue, a disaster, a problem, a community problem.

Bettina: Mm-hmm.

George: And it just, um, really felt that, that just felt so. Um, you must wake up every morning excited to go to work because you’re gonna solve the world’s problems.

Bettina: Well, I am not solving the world’s problems. I think none of us can do this alone. Uh, you know, the beauty is really that you can wake up in the morning and you can build on what you’ve learned. You can rely on the people around you to make it happen. And, um, there is nothing bigger and better than. Sort of the human potential to really think of what is that sliver of the bigger problem that I am uniquely [00:07:00] able to solve?

How can I put everything that I am good at that I can influence that others are good at to use for our communities? Um, it’s just another form of customer obsession and innovation.

George: And you started at Amazon as a software engineer?

Bettina: No, I started. as an editor.

George: As an editor,

Bettina: um, which required you to be a little bit technical.

Uh, in 1998, I don’t even know, software engineer was a job description that was widely known. Um, we just all got together and we would figure out how to build a website from which, our customers can shop with content. So I would never, you know, build myself, um, the technology around it, but I had to use as a content creator.

How do I. feature Harry Potter on the website. How do I commit this to code? You know, those were all things I’ve never gone to school for. Um, I was amazing.

George: And now you’re moving mountains, [00:08:00]

Bettina: um, packages, um, uh, and relief items since 2017, actually 26 million relief items. Wow.

Maureen: So what lessons can leaders take?

So podcast is a leadership podcast. Mm-hmm. People around the world, what can they take away from. From Amazon’s approach to build resilient long-term relationships that help communities.

Bettina: I want every leader who has a sliver of influence, uh, in terms their business, whatever their, whatever your business may be.

You guys’ business is amplifying voices and podcasts. Um, and thank you for having me because. That’s what you can do as leaders. You can amplify stories like this. Um, but any business can make a difference. We have so many small sellers and sellers [00:09:00] around the world who, when we talked to them about what we do for disaster relief, they wanna participate.

Um, I once spoke to, um, a group of outdoor sellers that were in town for our category, you know, teams. Um, and we showed them a slide and we said like, this is. What camping looks like. This is what a disaster looks like. And you saw the same items at use, and I said, like, my plea to you is that you offer a percentage of your goods, um, to disaster relief organizations in the community.

Anybody, you know, can do something with some of them. We work to these days, you know, we have um, we have solar lights that we, um, um, that we hand out, um, during disasters because they help reduce. Believe it or not, crime, you know, like when you can light, you tent a community, you know, say after, um, an earthquake and everybody tenses out [00:10:00] and afraid you know, you see less crime, because, you know, pathways can be secured, et cetera.

George: Reemphasizing the community helps solve the community problems and everybody, no matter how small can be part of the solution.

Bettina: Yeah. Yeah. You. Be amazed if you think about, um, how you can help. You know, sometimes you can just help by having a piece of information. Communication is crucial.

There was an earthquake in Albania at one point. We spoke to the Rec International, red Cross, the Federation. Uh, and uh, ask them, you know, what do you know about this earthquake? Can we help? And they said like, we are not involved at the moment, or no, thank you. Not yet. This was really, um. At times, you know when, when we were just about to begin of doing our disaster relief work, so our big partners didn’t have anything for us to get involved with.

We offered our help. Then a fulfillment center employee who worked actually in [00:11:00] our fulfillment centers in Germany, I believe, but was from Albania, originally reached out and said, my community is affected. How can I help the. And we said, tell us who is helping

Maureen: and

Bettina: tell us who is helping well and how can we help them.

And three days later we had trucks waiting in Bari to take the ferry to Albania to deliver relief items, blankets, tents, um, to help those that were just like ripped of their homes.

George: So just one small voice.

Bettina: Yes.

George: Heard

Bettina: Big impact

George: and huge impact.

Bettina: Yeah. Yeah.

George: Amazing.

Maureen: Yeah. So you leverage your partners with.

Partnership with customers, you leverage your fulfillment centers.

Bettina: Mm-hmm.

Maureen: You leverage your logistics expertise. Mm-hmm. You leverage employees passion for their communities.

Bettina: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Maureen: And their customers. Mm-hmm. What have I missed? [00:12:00] Uh, your personal commitment.

Bettina: Personal commitment, you know, the innovative spirit that lives through all of this.

Um, so many people, technology, have we talked about technology? So, uh, you

Maureen: use a lot of technology in disaster relief, don’t you?

Bettina: We do. We started really trying to, like, grasping our understanding around this. Um, so we have, um, experimented, uh, we, one of my colleagues, uh, Jess Reitz goes into, um, the disaster areas, um, with, um, crew of highly trained volunteers, uh, various.

Is self-sufficient. Um, driving vehicles that made for, you know, disaster, um, situations, um, with equipment. And then he tries and tests out how our, our technology can help those communities and then build [00:13:00] kits from that that are really super easy for anybody to use. Um, open flap, open, take out the cables, the radio transmitters, the.

Little receiver and, um, ear devices, um, set up your own little edge network connected to a power bank that we give you. Um, start connecting to your knowledge in the cloud and really trying to figure out life saving missions like, um, uh, uh, providing, uh, uh, drone imagery, um, to map out search and rescue missions or helping firefighters.

Um, see, uh. Unwanted objects, like private drones, fly over wildfires. Um, and, um, endangering the, the, the operations, uh, or uh, just helping a food bank like we did in Helene, in Hurricane Helene, uh, have power and [00:14:00] connectivity so that they can continue their operations after their building was swept away to help those that are affected and get supplies in there fast.

George: Wow. Amazing. Doing good. with what you do best.

Bettina: Right, exactly.

George: Incredible.

Maureen: So we’re gonna wrap here and move into the recording from the fireside chat. Mm-hmm. At the Marin Food Bank. And so thank you Bettina for Thank

Bettina: you. Thank you. Thank you for letting me talk about my passion project.

Maureen: Thank you for sharing your passion project and impacting the lives of millions of people at the worst times

Bettina: Yeah. Yeah, let’s hope like, you know, we never hope for disasters, but when they happen we’re there Thank you. Thank you.