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Legend: Jeff Bezos
Jeff
BEZOS
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Worth an incredible $182bn, Jeff Bezo’s meteoric rise to uber-wealthy began in 1994 when he founded Amazon. The idea came to him - so the story goes – while he was on a cross country road trip driving from New York to Seattle.
Born in Albuquerque, New Mexico to a teenage mother, Jacklyn Gise Jorgensen, and his biological father, Ted Jorgensen, he grew up and went to school in Housten and Miami. Bezos later graduated from Princeton University in 1986 with a degree in electrical engineering and computer science.
As a young graduate, started working on Wall Street, and dabbled in several financial and investment sectors until his 1994 road trip epiphany.
Bezos married his first wife, MacKenzie Bezos, shortly before Amazon was founded. The couple have three biological children and one daughter, whom they adopted from China.
Their marriage broke up in 2019 after 25 years of marriage following news that Bezos was in a relationship with Lauren Sanchez, a TV host and helicopter pilot who, along with her husband, had been friends with the couple.
Despite being classed as one of the world’s richest men, Bezos is a far cry from the archetypal workaholic with nothing else on his mind than the investments of the day. Instead, according to those close to him, he takes life at a relaxed pace, preferring to put his family commitments ahead of any work duties that are pending.
A firm advocate of the benefits of a good night’s sleep, Bezos insists on getting eight hours of shut-eye every night and never schedules meetings before lunch, preferring to spend his mornings in a relaxed manner with his family.
His hobbies include buying up companies (a recent acquisition was The Washington Post in 2017).
Another passion is diving for space treasure. Bezos spends time combing the oceans for discarded NASA rocket ships. Parts of NASA rocket ships detach from space shuttles mid-flight and the boosters are dumped in the oceans.
Bezos works with teams in submarines to retrieve the space programme relics. According to reports, he once spent three weeks on a single underwater rocket hunt.
