NewsSportsEntertainmentLifestyleOpinionUSA TODAYObituariesE-EditionLegals Business leadership: Wearing different hats is exhausting Jeff Bezos bucked a business leadership trend by heading Amazon from startup to its current place as one of the world's most valuable companies. Jennifer Bonnett This is a column by The Creative Coast Executive Director Jennifer Bonnett. She is a regular contributor to the Savannah Morning News. Jeff Bezos, chief executive officer of online behemoth Amazon, announced Tuesday that he would be stepping down as CEO later this year. My social media channels are blowing up and a lot of people seem shocked. I am not. The man has got to be exhausted. He has shepherded this company from its founding as an online bookstore in 1994, through its initial public offering in 1997, through the Dot Com Crash in 2001, the “Great Recession” in 2008 and 2009, and now a global pandemic. On the way, he transformed it into the largest ecommerce platform in the world and then to the largest cloud and software-as-a-service company on the planet.