Jackie Bezos, the mother of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and one of the company’s earliest investors, died on Thursday in Miami at the age of 78. According to Jeff Bezos, she had been battling Lewy body dementia, a progressive neurological disorder.
In 1995, Jackie and her husband Miguel Bezos invested just over $245,000 in Amazon, which at the time was an online bookstore founded by her son in 1994. That investment grew alongside Amazon’s meteoric rise, with the company now valued at nearly $2.5 trillion. In 2000, Jeff Bezos famously used his mother’s online wish list—featuring a Casio camera and Motorola walkie-talkies—during a New York expo to demonstrate how easy it was to order gifts on Amazon.
Born on December 29, 1946, in Washington, D.C., Jackie Bezos grew up in Albuquerque, New Mexico, where she gave birth to Jeff at the age of 17. In a 2020 congressional testimony, Jeff recounted the challenges his mother faced as a pregnant high school student in 1964. Initially, her school attempted to expel her, but her father persuaded the principal to allow her to finish her education. However, she was barred from participating in the graduation ceremony.
Determined to build a better future, Jackie attended night school while working at a bank. She chose professors who allowed her to bring baby Jeff to class, often arriving with one duffel bag filled with textbooks and another with baby supplies. During this period, she met Miguel Bezos, a Cuban immigrant, whom she married. Miguel adopted Jeff, and the couple went on to have two more children, Christina and Mark.
At the age of 45, Jackie returned to college, earning a bachelor’s degree in psychology from Saint Elizabeth University in New Jersey. In 2000, she and Miguel founded the Bezos Family Foundation, dedicated to funding educational initiatives, where she served as president until her passing.
Jackie Bezos was diagnosed with Lewy body dementia in 2020. She is survived by her husband Miguel, her three children, eleven grandchildren, and one great-grandchild, the family foundation said in a statement.
