Two of Amazon’s most senior Black executives are departing the company, according to four people familiar with the change, leaving Amazon without any Black leaders on its senior leadership team, which includes more than two dozen executives responsible for running the company.
Amazon confirmed the departures on Tuesday shortly after announcing a new head of its retail and operations business.
Alicia Boler Davis, the senior vice president who oversees Amazon’s fulfillment operations, and David Bozeman, the vice president overseeing its trucking operations, are both leaving, the people said. Neither immediately responded to requests for comment. Amazon had no further comment.
On Tuesday, Andy Jassy, who became chief executive of Amazon almost a year ago, named Doug Herrington, a 17-year veteran of the company, as the new chief executive of Worldwide Amazon Stores. He is filling a role similar to one held since early last year by Dave Clark, who was the architect of the company’s warehouse operations. Mr. Clark is leaving Amazon at the end of the month — after 23 years at the company — to become the chief executive of Flexport, a logistics start-up.
In an email to employees announcing the change, Mr. Jassy said Mr. Herrington was “a builder of great teams and brings substantial retail, grocery, demand generation, product development, and Amazon experience to bear.”
The company’s vast operations, including warehouses, trucks and delivery networks that fulfill and ship customer orders, will be managed by John Felton, another longtime veteran who had most recently run the company’s logistics and delivery operations.
Ms. Boler Davis joined Amazon in 2019 from General Motors, where she was once seen as a potential successor to the auto company’s chief executive, Mary Barra. In 2020, she joined Amazon’s “S-team” of senior leaders, which at the time had no Black members. Employees had voiced concern about the lack of diversity in that elite group. She was promoted to senior vice president at Amazon last year.
Mr. Bozeman joined Amazon in 2017 from Caterpillar and ran operations that hauled cargo between buildings in its growing warehouse infrastructure.
Amazon said it doubled the number of Black employees in the United States at the director and vice president levels in 2020, and by another almost 70 percent in 2021. About 70 percent of Amazon’s U.S. work force, largely its hourly workers that power its operations, are not white.
Mr. Felton wrote in an email to staff that Ms. Boler Davis and Mr. Bozeman had “decided to explore new opportunities outside Amazon,” and he thanked them for “their remarkable contributions to the company and our employees.”
Mr. Jassy’s note also said that in addition to Mr. Felton, Mr. Herrington would have eight other direct reports, including leaders responsible for the international retail business, health care ventures and a new program to let merchants offer Amazon’s Prime shipping benefits to customers on their own websites. Eight men and one woman will report to Mr. Herrington, according to the memo.
