Dive Brief:
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Maria Renz has been named technical advisor to Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, a supremely insider, advisory role also known as “Bezos’s shadow.”
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Renz, most recently CEO of Amazon’s Quidsi brand, has held a variety of positions at Amazon for 15 years.
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Emilie Scott, most recently VP of general merchandising at Old Navy, replaces Renz at Quidsi.
Dive Insight:
Bezos has employed “shadows,” a somewhat difficult-to-explain, highly coveted role that appears to have great value both to Bezos and the executive filling it, since the late '90s. With the appointment of Renz, it’s the first time the job has gone to a woman.
“I was a receptacle for him for any of the 19 ongoing activities in his brain that didn’t have a place in the normal organization,” Stig Leschly, one of Bezos' first shadows, said to Bloomberg about the role. “It was honest to god one of the most extraordinary things a young person can do.”
