Innovating Leadership:
Co-Creating Our Future

Resources:

Learn more about Amazon’s sustainability initiatives at https://sustainability.aboutamazon.com/.

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:

Kara Hurst is the Chief Sustainability Officer at Amazon. In this role, she leads the worldwide teams working on environmental sustainability, human rights and social impact across the company. Kara joined Amazon in 2014 to build its sustainability roadmap and led the company’s evolution toward more sustainable operations, transportation, products, and packaging. She also oversees changes in Amazon’s carbon-free energy strategy and efforts around water stewardship, reduced waste, and biodiversity. Under her leadership, Amazon announced its commitment to be net-zero carbon by 2040 and co-founded The Climate Pledge, which now has over 550 signatories. Kara holds an undergraduate degree from Barnard College of Columbia University and a Master of Public Policy (MPP) from the University of California, Berkeley. She serves on the Board of Directors of Water.org and Stolen Youth.

Sarah Mathew is Amazon’s Delivery Experience Vice President, leading a worldwide product and technology organization that builds and enables products, programs, and services that make it easier for customers to control when, where, and how they receive earth’s largest selection. Her team owns all delivery-related CX throughout the customer shopping journey, including the Your Orders page and all delivery-related notifications, and leads programs like Same Day delivery, Amazon Day delivery, No-Rush shipping, and non-Prime shipping. Sarah joined Amazon in 2013 and has held a number of roles within the company, including being part of the founding team for Amazon’s first physical stores and helping launch and lead the free on-site COVID testing program for Amazon frontline employees. Prior to joining Amazon.com, Sarah spent six years in brand management at Johnson & Johnson Consumer Companies. She received her undergraduate degree from Harvard College and an MBA and an MS in Environmental Science from the University of Michigan.

Transcript
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Maureen: [00:00:00] Welcome, Kara Hurst. We’re at the Delivering the Future event with Amazon, and this morning you talked about the climate pledge and creating nuclear free power and also your water impact. So would you share with some of our listeners, ’cause I know people are concerned about sustainability and Amazon is committed to both sustainability and.

Ai

Kara: we are. Um, and thanks for having me. Um, yeah, we are absolutely committed to finding ways to utilize AI to accelerate our sustainability agenda, which is exciting. So the climate pledge that you mentioned we committed to in 2019, it’s our goal to be net zero carbon by 2040. One of the most exciting things about that is how many other companies have also joined us in that commitment.

So we announced at our New York City Climate Week, [00:01:00] uh, events that over 600 companies are now in that with us, and that spans so many different industries across so many different geographies, which was the intent. That we can send these larger market demand signals that we really need across industries, whether it’s steel or cement or fuels, uh, transportation industries, that we need new products and services that we need to transition these industries and these economi.

To, uh, move us in that direction. So, um, we’re really excited about what we’re seeing there. We’ve got joint action projects in so many different places around the world where we don’t have all the solutions. It’s certainly challenging in many ways, but we’re trying to come together and share as private sector companies what works, and then also to work in public-private partnerships.

So I can give you lots of examples. Specifically of what we’re doing in those ways, um, working on building electric charging [00:02:00] infrastructure with cities in, you know, in India and Latin America as an example, because we can procure the electric vehicles, but we need cities to come along with us and build that infrastructure as one example.

So the pledge is a, it’s a commitment, but more than that, it’s a community of action where people are coming together and, and working on sending these demand signals and taking action.

George: That’s great and, and you talked earlier this morning too about, um, the data centers and, and the water use, but how Amazon is doing it.

Better and more sustainably. Do you wanna talk a little bit more about that? Love

Kara: to water for us is an issue that has been Absolutely. I think for, for many communities and many companies rising in importance. Many of us live in water stressed areas. I actually recently was doing some work with a project we’re doing up in the Pacific Northwest region where our headquarters is, and I was, I was even really surprised to find out that.

It’s, there’s drought up there. I mean, we [00:03:00] have a lot of rain as people are, um, well aware of in the Seattle area, but there’s drought also in the Pacific Northwest region. So there, water stress is a real thing. And, um, we know that data centers are requiring more energy and more water with the advent of ai.

And so just to explain that a little bit. AI takes more energy and you know, data centers then heat up and they need water to cool. ’cause sometimes people don’t understand the connection between, you know, you know, that agricultural industries take water to, um, to utilize, to make their products and, um, you know, other, other industries use a lot of water.

But why, why would data center you need it for cooling. So a lot of the things that we’re doing, um, in that part of our business for AWS. We’re looking at how do we actually one, use less water? How do we design our data centers to use less water and use it much more efficiently? We have a water, um, utilization metric that we publish, and we’re one of the best in the industry at that.

So of course we wanna use [00:04:00] that natural resource very, very efficiently. Um, utilize technologies like liquid cooling and design our buildings differently and. Um, do all of the things we can do to, to respect the natural resource, but when we do need to use it for cooling, um, we want to commit to returning more water to the communities where we operate.

So that’s our commitment to be, uh, what we call water positive or to return more water to the communities where we operate our data centers by 2030, and we’re 53% of the way towards that commitment. Um, so that means water replenishment projects. Yeah, thank you. That we’re working with, we’ve got an investment with water.org, um, that we’re working on and, and other partners and, um, and places like India where it is, we, everyone knows water is a big issue.

We looked across our entire Amazon operations and said it’s really important that we go faster. So we have a water positive commitment by 2027 for India. So I think where we know we need to focus on it, where we need to go faster, um, we will and. Um, we have lots of [00:05:00] different, um, projects around the world where we’re, and we launched also a center for, um, AI and water excellence, um, with the University of Pennsylvania, a number of utilities and a, a leading water nonprofit.

Where we’re publishing everything we learn and encouraging others to join that as well.

Maureen: One of the things you mentioned this morning that I was gonna tee up is the no gatekeeping that you are sharing all of that information with communities and with other companies.

Kara: Absolutely. Um, we, I, I am passionate about that because I think that sustainability is an area where you can have pre-competitive collaboration and we know that, um, yes, there are things we compete on as companies.

Yeah, absolutely. But this is an area where we’re in this decisive decade and. We just don’t have the time to gate, keep a lot of solutions, and when we come together, we can go faster. So where we can, we will. Um, and we started something called the sustainability exchange where we, there’s [00:06:00]seven different areas of it and we publish as much as we can about what we’re learning.

And so we really are taking a hard look at things like our building’s playbook. We had all of our building engineers come together and build this playbook about how do you do a sustainable building and what do you need to do from HVAC to building materials to, you know. Concrete and steel, things like that.

And it was proprietary to us and we looked at it and said, does that need to be proprietary to Amazon? And we decided it didn’t. So we published it and we’re, we are also inviting other companies to publish things on the sustainability exchange. And we have over 40 companies now that have put materials on there.

So I think by saying, look, we think this is a space where. Everybody can learn, you know, and, and let’s, let’s compete on who can go faster actually in sustainability rather than who can, you know, win. Um, and let’s share both what’s working and what’s not. ’cause I think equally, don’t be afraid to fail.

These are all, a lot of this is new. These are new technologies, these are new things we’re trying. I wanna know from my other peers and companies, like, what did you try and what worked? But [00:07:00] also what’d you try and what, what do I need to stay away from? What didn’t work? Um, because a lot of this, you know, the quicker we learn, the faster we can go.

George: Yeah, it’s, it, it’s, uh, it’s really coming across, uh, your passion and, and, and, and being an incredible leader for sustainability. Uh, what, where does that passion come from? What, what, where was that, what was that moment in your life where you said, I wanna, I wanna make, do, do really good things for the communities?

Kara: I think, um, my passion comes from a couple different areas. One is I do, I’ve always loved, you know, oceans and. I grew up in New England around the beach, and I just love the natural environment. So for me, that’s a huge passion. Um, I always joke that when I was a kid I wanted to be like a dolphin or a whale trainer.

I don’t think there’s a thing as a whale trainer. I don’t think that’s a job. But, um, I just love, I love. Um, you know, being around the national environment and I think, I think, you know, thinking about not having a lot of that for my kids and their kids and [00:08:00] all of that is, is something that drives me as it does many people.

Mm-hmm. But the, the thing that really drives me about working at a company like Amazon is the scale at which we get to put our resources to use. So one of the things we have, you know, we have leadership principles and one of them is. Size and scale for, you know, using our size and scale for good. And I think I, I try to live that every day.

Our teams do. And I think it’s such a privilege to be able to be at a large company and that is investing time and energy and money and people into these kinds of efforts. And I. I really take that to heart, and I think that that drives me to say I, I operate from a position of privilege in that I get to be in a role where we can invest in these things and we can put resources towards them.

And, um, I want to make the most of that.

George: Great. Do you, do you feel that, um, is it challenging to keep sustainability top of mind, uh, within the other [00:09:00] departments, or is it, is it, is it sort of a, a core value?

Kara: It is so much a part of our DNA that of course there are challenges. I, um, but I, I think when you show people that we can win at business by doing this, that’s the key.

So we have leaders who are passionate about it and we have leaders who, you know, it’s not top of mind for them, but they are excited about how they can win for their customer when they’re doing this. And I gave some of those examples today as well, what I need to show. So if there’s a leader who might be, you know, personally motivated because they also love sustainability.

Mm-hmm. That’s great. But if there’s a leader who’s personally passionate about wanting to deliver the best customer experience, then let’s talk about that because there are plenty of ways to do that and deliver sustainability benefits. Um, and so I understand that it may always not be number one on, on anyone’s list.

I just want it to be in the series of considerations as a business. Like we would have cost and quality and business continuity and safety, [00:10:00] you know, which should always be at the top. So all of those things, um. Are important components of a business, and I think our leaders understand that, you know, having healthy communities with clean air where people live, that that is paramount to us having a healthy business.

And so we can’t grow our business without enough energy. We can’t grow our customer base without having healthy communities in a lively economy. So these things are not. They are inseparable. They, you know, you can’t divide one from the other. And I think if you have a big worldview, which our leaders do.

You, you understand that all of this is actually very much in tandem.

Maureen: Let’s come back then to the climate pledge and the carbon free portion. So not only do data centers use water, they use power.

yle=”font-weight: 400;”>K</strong>ara: Mm-hmm.

e=”font-weight: 400;”>Maureen: And so let’s talk a little bit about what you’re doing in the power space.

Kara: Absolutely. We’ve been at this for a long time.

Um, and you know, of [00:11:00] course I’ve been growing our portfolio of renewable energy for many, many years. Um, wind and solar energy. Um, we’re the largest corporate purchaser of renewable energy and have been for the past five years, uh, in the world. Uh, we have a portfolio of over 600 projects globally, and we will continue to do that, but we knew with AI that we have.

Uh, the need to continue to find new sources of energy and nuclear has been a, a big solve for us and others on that. So, um, we’ve done several investments in different kinds of nuclear projects. Um, and when I talked about, you know, here at Delivering the Future, it has been. Um, our investment with X energy and small modular nuclear.

And so I think these technologies that are, are coming along are really exciting. Um, they are new and we’re learning as we go, but the potential, for example, with that partnership with, with X energy to bring on five gigawatts of nuclear and through small modular by 2039 is really exciting. Um, and it is carbon free [00:12:00] and it is a new source of carbon free energy that we can add, um, and continue to grow our business in that way.

Maureen: So some of us think of nuclear rods and disposal and all that stuff. You are holding nuclear orbs this morning. Can you describe that? Because it changes the mindset of what we think of with Fukushima. This isn’t that.

Kara: It isn’t, it’s a new kind of technology. Um, yeah. I was holding a small ceramic coated, uh.

Not, it wasn’t enriched, but, um, a, a new source of energy. Yeah. And, and. You know, I think these are the kinds of technological innovations that such as, and also things like geothermal, where it’s gonna be very interesting and the waste, um, and some of the other issues will be different, right? Mm-hmm. The safety issues are very different.

They’re much more contained and, and safer. So, um, you know, we, one of the reasons that we are really interested in partnering with a company like X Energy or some of the other partners that we have, is that [00:13:00] safety is at the top of their considerations, um, as are sustainability and, and, um. You know, and community partnership and the communities where there are operating, I mean, we’re gonna be the, the offtaker of the synergy to be clear, right?

Mm-hmm. These are not our operations, but they are. They’re going into communities where they’re excited about, people are excited about these new jobs. Mm-hmm. They’re excited about the potential of learning these new technologies and what, you know, this, these kind of new engineering jobs are gonna bring and the safety aspects are different.

Um, so we’re learning as we go, but it is a new set of dynamics. And a new set of, um, ways of operating. And so I think that there are really, there’s a lot of potential, a lot of things to figure out, a lot of things that we’re working with the industry and policy makers and regulators and all of the, and the communities on, but I think that the potential is enormous.

Maureen: Well, and then I want to draw us back to the idea of not gatekeeping. That, that you’re solving for water problems, you’re solving for power problems [00:14:00] and putting the resources of. One of the largest companies in the world to solve for those issues helps all of us.

Kara: Yeah. We, you know, I think anytime where we can come together and think about, um, you know, I didn’t even talk about the buying coalitions that we have, but we just launched something on, um, sustainable cement to come together.

We need to treat this as an economic problem.

Maureen: Sorry. You’re, thank you.

Kara: Um, I’ll start that over. Beep.

We need to come together and think about, you know, this as also what are the economic drivers. So we, we wanna solve, we wanna offer up what we know, but we also wanna bring people together to send those demand signals.

Maureen: Mm-hmm.

Kara: So it is about, you know, coming together and saying, um. There are solutions that we have and there’s information we may have or learnings we have from the investments that we made, but we also have the power to say we have a very big value chain, a very big [00:15:00] supply chain.

Who can we bring together by, you know, saying, okay, we have put, uh, carbon cure in 40 buildings and we’ve learned this amount, but now we wanna open source that and we want to, you know. Make it available to everybody else. Mm-hmm. That’s an investment we made through our climate pledge fund. Or we wanna put a coalition together on sustainable cement and say there is a market for this.

There is a market for net zero steel. There is a market for sustainable aviation fuels. There is a market for, um, you know, these products and services. Again, because the companies that are manufacturing them, they need to go back to their boards of directors with those signals and say, our. You know, our, uh, customers are demanding this.

Mm-hmm. And so we are a big customer and can also provide that. So I think that’s, that’s equally important.

Maureen: So it’s an ecosystem play.

Oh, that’s it. Yeah. I was just gonna have you do the close. Oh,

George: Kara, thank Kara, thank you so much for [00:16:00] being here. We really appreciate all your insights. Keep doing wonderful things for Amazon, and wonderful things for the community.

Kara: Well, thanks so much for having me. It was a fun conversation.

Maureen: Thank you. We love sharing the impact that you’re making and hearing that companies at this scale are so committed to sustainability and creating a better world for all of us.

Great. Going forward,

Kara: I think there’s no other way forward. Thank you.

Maureen: Thank you.

Kara: And we’ll

Maureen: reach out for photos and bios and all this stuff. That was great. Okay. Perfect, by the way. Okay.

Hi. Hi. You are here with Maureen George Limbert and Sarah Matthew. Her role is Vice President of Global Delivery Experience at Amazon, and we are live at the Delivering the Future event.

Sarah: Excited to be here.

Maureen: So let’s start with the announcement of add to order and talk us through. What you presented and kind of how you [00:17:00] presented it this morning.

So I’m the mom of two kids.

Sarah: Yes. Uh, and I will say this morning when I presented, I had a fictitious mom of two kids who secretly was me, as you probably figured out. Uh, I have, uh, twin 11 year olds, um, boy, girl in sixth grade. Uh, and so a lot of the anecdotes I shared were. It’s pulled right out of my regular life.

So add to delivery is this brand new feature that we launched, which literally makes adding something to your upcoming order as simple as the press of a blue button in the, on the Amazon website. Uh, and so the insight we had for customers is that often customers place a lot of orders, and when we look at order data, we see customers, a lot of our best customers placed a lot of orders and some within 10 minutes of each other.

And we realize probably that’s somebody realizing 10 minutes later. I forgot X thing. Uh, and so how could we make that much easier for customers? And so that thus the idea of add to delivery was born. And literally what we do is if you have an upcoming order, we take that information of when that order’s gonna [00:18:00] arrive, what’s in it.

And we look across all our 3 million, a hundred million items that are in our store, and we say, which of these items could arrive without upcoming delivery? If the two match, we show a little blue button that will say, add to today’s delivery, or tomorrow’s delivery, or Wednesday’s delivery. Whenever the delivery, all you have to do is press that button and the item will magically arrive with whatever order you have coming.

And since we’ve launched this, we launched it about a month ago, customers have used it more than 50 million times.

Maureen: I’m probably one of those customers who. Uh, orders some stuff, realized I forgot something. And, and from a sustainability perspective, I may get three Amazon deliveries in a day. All the different packaging, all the stuff and drivers and gas, and now they’re my next door neighbor’s also getting something.

But it, from a logistics and sustainability perspective, it’s brilliant.

Sarah: It is. We love it for both those things. I will tell you though, if you’re [00:19:00] getting three Amazon deliveries, it is likely. Each of those routes is already very dense. Uh, meaning there’s a lot of customers who are getting the stuff. Yeah.

So you don’t have to feel guilty about that. Um, one of the things that we see about same day delivery is it’s so popular, uh, that. People all in your neighborhood and in your block are gonna be getting it all the time.

Maureen: Oh yeah. But

Sarah: yes, I like getting fewer orders often ’cause one person has to come to my house.

Um, and so, and a lot of customers like that, uh, knowledge of knowing, hey, this stuff is coming altogether and so I only have to, you know, watch out for one delivery, for example.

George: Well, I, I am, uh, a multi. Orderer in short periods of time, so I feel like this feature’s been around for a really long time.

Sarah: Well, so that’s the magic of it, is I was actually talking to another woman this morning who was like, I didn’t realize that was new.

And I think I just have used it a hundred times because I just moved and I was like, that’s the beauty of it. Right. You want it to feel so familiar that you feel like it’s been around forever.

George: It sounds like a big part of [00:20:00] what you do is listening to those customers. How does that drive you? How do you listen to the customers and, and how do you deliver on that?

Sarah: So we listen to them, we watch what they do, and we watch their behavior and we listen to them. And so one of the things you’ve probably heard about Amazon is the power of the anecdote. Uh, and so I’ll tell you. Every single one of the people who work at Amazon uses all the things that my team owns. And so I get lots of helpful emails, uh, from various people all around Amazon with their opinions, uh, and the challenges they’ve had, or like either things, oh, you launched this thing, I loved it.

Or, Hey, you launched this thing. I sort of had a bad experience. And while sometimes you get those emails and you go, Ugh, it’s actually their gift, right? Because every anecdote. Uncovers some sort of problem. And if probably one customers have that problem, lots of customers have had that problem. And so there’s the power of the anecdote.

Uh, also if you tell somebody who you meet for the first time that you run delivery experience at [00:21:00] Amazon, everybody always has a story, uh, and an anecdote. Mm-hmm. So I learn a lot from that. But then we also watch customer behavior. So, I’ll give you an example. We recently launched grocery delivery where you can get groceries along with your same day order, and we’ve seen that it changes how customers shop.

And so we’ve seen that they’ve started adding more and more items like strawberries, bananas, milk, eggs, uh, to existing orders once you make it easy. We’ve also launched some new customer experiences where we have, uh, a dense grid of items that pops up, uh, which has lots of perishable items, and we see that customers.

We’ll look at that and go, oh, great, I’m gonna add this, this, this, this, this. And their units per order goes up a lot. Uh, and so we also just watch that behavior. And then sometimes we launch things and we see customers don’t use them, uh, as much as we thought. Uh, and so we do a lot of AB testing in Amazon.

And sometimes those AB tests win, and sometimes those ab tests do not win. Uh, and they’re, and they don’t win in surprising ways. And so then you quickly say, we should take this down. Customers don’t like it. And what can we learn from that? And how do we make it better?

George: Great. [00:22:00]

Maureen: So you’ve talked about Amazon’s record breaking, delivery speed, including in rural areas and expanding same day capabilities here, us and globally.

What leadership principles guide your team as you scale innovations while staying grounded in delivering on customer trust, employee wellbeing? And community. Those are a lot of variables to manage and I’m guessing occasionally conflicting variables.

Sarah: Yes. I think the first and foremost is customer obsession.

Right. At the end of the day, the reason we’re expanding fast delivery to more and more places is that customers love fast delivery and over and over and over again, we see the faster we deliver, the more customers come to Amazon and the more they come to Amazon, they buy more. Uh, and they realize that Amazon can fulfill all of their needs.

So it starts from the customer and from that customer insights. I think second is frugality, right? Uh, probably you’ve heard Doug, our CEO of [00:23:00] stores talk about. Speed and cost to serve, and how can those two go hand in hand? And so we look at what is the most efficient, effective way that we can get stuff to the customers?

How can we repurpose all of the assets we have that are located close to customers? Some of the way that we’re delivering fast speeds in rural areas is taking, uh, delivery stations like this one and saying, well, we have these delivery stations. We already get packages into them. Drivers come pick up those packages and they deliver them.

What if we actually put product. Inventory in those delivery stations. Well then drivers could pick that inventory up and deliver that to customers the same day. So we’re really sort of using all of our assets to their fullest to deliver for our customers. And then my favorite leadership principle, well, actually I have a lot of favorite ones.

Two of my favorites. One is learn and be curious, which is there’s always something to learn. Uh, and if you watch and you listen and you, uh, you can learn from customers, you can learn from. I love coming into the field and going and walking at sites ’cause the people running the sites on the ground always have some sort of insight that I would never have [00:24:00] known.

You know, sitting in corporate, um, and using that to invent on behalf of customers. And then finally. Probably my favorite is have backbone, disagree and commit. Uh, it’s a very unique Amazonian thing, um, and which is basically if you’re having a discussion, no matter what level you are, if you disagree, it’s your job to disagree in that meeting and to raise your hand and say, Hey, I have a different point of view.

Now at the end of the meeting, they might decide, we heard you, but we’re actually gonna go in a different direction. That’s when you commit. Um, but I just love that we have this culture. Where we’re always pushing each other and nobody at any level is afraid to question, uh, the way we’re going. And often we find that that question opens up, oh, I hadn’t thought about it like that.

Uh, and we go a totally different direction than we would’ve.

Maureen: As you say that, I think of so many environments where disagreement. Absolutely discouraged based on level.

Sarah: Right. Uh, and what I, it was funny, I was talking to one of my direct reports, uh, the other day and I said, you [00:25:00] know, what I love about you, uh, is that you disagree with me all the time, and you always tell me when I’m wrong.

Now am I always happy about that? No, of course not. You know, but like mm-hmm. She makes me better because she’s not afraid to say, I think you’ve got it wrong here. I think you’re missing this. Like, here, you know, here’s a piece of data that you might not have had. I often say to my team, um. This is my opinion.

Uh, but feel, you know, if the, and here’s what I think based on the data I have, this is my opinion. If I’m wrong, you gotta tell me. And often they’re like, well, uh, here’s some data that you missed and you’re wrong. And I’m like, oh, great. Okay, I’m wrong. So we’re gonna do what you think.

Maureen: And that’s also your opportunity for them to learn.

When you’re right.

Sarah: Exactly. Uh, and it’s funny because, so Amazon has this leadership principle. All right. A lot and some, uh, some of the lore about it is when it first came out, I think people interpreted as being right means I never changed my mind. Right? And so you would see these like senior and I wasn’t around them, but you would see these senior executives like dig their heels in and refuse to budge.

And then they realized, no, [00:26:00] actually what we mean by our write a lot is leaders who are write a lot change their minds when new information comes. Right. And so one of the, actually one of my favorite projects, this is a little off topic, but one of the favorite projects I worked on at Amazon was our employee COVID testing.

And uh, it was just, we were learning in real time about COVID. And so what you thought yesterday, today was different. And so you had to learn how to pivot really fast in response to new information.

George: And, and so in that circumstance, being right changed by the minute.

Sarah: Yeah. And I think for me, that made me a really different kind of leader.

Right, because you realize like, I don’t know best and I have to listen.

Maureen: So George was running a hotel chain during COVID, really? And so the two of you can probably share some interesting experiences about what do you do with essential workers. You are delivering packages when delivery drivers don’t know if they’re gonna be safe.

You are housing essential workers because they’re afraid to [00:27:00] go home.

Sarah: Yeah. For me it was just about, you know, uh, again, the customer insights, how do you sort of bring it back to, uh, what I do day to day in and day out? It’s really listening to the customer, adjusting in response to new information and kind of going from there.

And so for, you know we started this talking about rural delivery and I think for me a lot of that insight is. What we saw when we put this inventory, uh, near to world customers and started delivering the same day is their behavior changed. They come to Amazon more often, they buy more products.

They start really leaning into those everyday essentials, the stuff that you need day in and day out. Mm-hmm. And actually prime memberships sign up started going up. And so you see like, oh, customers really love this. Yeah.

George: So as you dig deeper into same day, I mean, what is the reach? Is it just major cities?

Um, is it the rural areas in the, in the Midwest? What’s the reach of it now?

Sarah: Yeah, so what we, right now we’re in nine in the us we’re in 9,000 cities and towns in the us. Wow. Um, [00:28:00] and we announced this $4 billion investment to go to 4,000. Uh, rural towns by the end of the year. Uh, and so we’re gonna be in a lot of places and cover a lot of our prime demand, and our goal is to get to as many customers as we can.

George: How about internationally?

Sarah: So internationally, um, we are in, in Europe, for example, we’re in 135 different locations in Europe delivering same day. And you know, this year for the third year in a row, we’re on track to announce that we’re gonna deliver. Uh, or we’re not on track to deliver for our prime customers globally at our fastest ever speeds with the most ever packages, same day or next day.

So we announced that, uh, in 2023. In 2024, and we’re on track for 2025. Incredible. Yeah.

Maureen: So as we think about health of your customers, same day, food delivery in food deserts, people who don’t have access easily. To healthy food. This is a game changer for a lot of people. Yeah. Or medications.

Sarah: Yes. We’re doing same day delivery of pharmacy.

I don’t, [00:29:00] uh, directly work on that, so I can’t talk a ton about that. But I know as a customer, same day delivery of pharmacy is a game changer. Uh, I recently, I dunno, probably in the last six months, changed my pharmacy to Amazon Pharmacy and it has been life changing. Like I don’t have to stand in line for 45 minutes at the pharmacy with a sick child or two in tow.&lt;/p></p&gt;</p>

<p style=”font-weight: 400;”>I can go to the doctor, get the script. And it’s at my, on my doorstep that night. Uh, it’s amazing.

George: Brilliant. So your insights into the customer, I mean, you listen to the customer, you are the customer. It sounds like you live, breathe, and, and, and dream all about what is the customer experience.

Sarah: I do. Yeah. Uh, and I have two customers who live in my house, who are 11, who like, love to give me unvarnished feedback, uh, which is also helpful.

Um, but yeah, I do think though the danger is that you. If you are your own customer, you sometimes get blind to that. Everybody is not like you. Uh, and so I always try to sort of also take it back to like, what are [00:30:00] the insights from people who are not like me? Because there’s a real danger in thinking that you are, um, that you are representative of everybody.

And I know I’m not, we always talk in Amazon around the table. We’re always like. We’re Amazonians, we’re weird. Uh, you know, meaning like we know so much about Amazon, uh, that we need to remember that customers don’t, uh, and that, you know, uh, we have to really continue to mine those customer insights and not just rely on our own observations.

Maureen: So I hear a lot of curiosity and learning and being open to feedback. What’s your proudest experience of being an Amazonian?

Sarah: Uh, oh gosh. Uh. I think my proudest experience of being an Amazonian is really watching people helping develop other people. Right? And so watching people that you’ve hired at sort of go and advance through their careers.

Like I’ve got a couple people on my team who I hired, uh, four or five years ago, and they’ve been through different teams and now they’re back on my team. And it’s sort of [00:31:00] amazing to see how they’ve grown in their experiences. And like I, there’s nothing I love more than coming to a meeting and watching somebody who.

Uh, do something way better than I could. Uh, and just watch that next generation of leaders sort of rise. It’s amazing,

Maureen: I I the phrase nine’s higher tens. Sixes hire fives. Uh, I probably didn’t get that right. But the, but the idea that Amazon hires people who are committed to excellence.

Sarah: Yes. Uh, and I just love, I mean, my team, I cannot talk enough about how awesome my team is and how much they deliver and how customer obsessed they are and how they want to be better for our customers every day.

Uh, and it’s really inspiring to watch

George: well, the thirst for knowledge. Um, the development, the thirst for development, uh, enhancement, enhancing their careers. It’s really, uh, it’s really seems like a big passion of yours.

Sarah: It is. So I was a high school teacher actually before I went to business school. Uh, wow.

And I just love. [00:32:00] Teach. I love learning and I love teaching. I was that, what was the subjects? So I, uh, taught after school and I taught in a alternative school. So I wrote, taught writing, creative writing. Oh, wow. So my kids made their own magazine, which was really fun. So they came up with a mission statement and a name, and they wrote their own articles.

Um, I was debating, you know, should I go get my MBA or get my MFA in creative writing? You can guess, which I chose. Um, but I love writing and Amazon is a writing culture, so it’s actually like a really good fit for me.

George: Amazing.

Maureen: So Sarah, thank you. I love hearing. The, the way you are bringing your passion for customers, for learning, for training, for developing people to a role where your work impacts both external customers and internal team members on a daily basis.

It makes lives better.

Sarah: Yeah, it’s fun. I mean, at the end of the day, that’s what it’s about, right? It’s about how do you, what, how do you make the world a better place? How do you make people’s lives [00:33:00] easier? How do you make people. Uh, and then, you know, how do you make your lives or your team better every day?

Maureen: Thank you for joining us. Thank

Sarah: you.

Maureen: Thank you.