Amazon’s North America fulfillment chief is leaving
A worker sorts out packages in the outbound dock at the Amazon fulfillment center in Eastvale, Calif., Tuesday, Aug. 31, 2021[ads1].
Watchara Phomicinda | MediaNews Group | The Riverside Press-Enterprise via Getty Images
One of Amazon’s top operating managers is leaving the e-retailer, the company confirmed.
Melissa Nick, a vice president of North America customer fulfillment, will leave the company on June 16, Amazon said. Nick, who joined Amazon in 2014, was responsible for one of Amazon’s largest fulfillment regions, overseeing nearly 300 facilities that process and ship customer orders.
“We appreciate all of Melissa’s contributions over the past nine years, including building a strong team that will continue to support our employees across the region,” Amazon spokeswoman Barbara Agrait said in a statement. “We wish Melissa the best of luck with the next step in her professional journey.”
Nick reported to Yonatan Gal, a vice president responsible for overseeing Amazon’s fulfillment supply chain, equipment maintenance and repairs, as well as fulfillment execution, in North America, according to internal company documents seen by CNBC. Gal reports to Stefano Perego, vice president of customer fulfillment and global operations services for North America and Europe, who is a direct report to John Felton, Amazon’s head of worldwide operations and a member of CEO Andy Jassy’s S team, the documents show. The S-Team is a tight-knit group of senior executives from nearly every area of Amazon’s business.
Amazon has recently revamped its US operations in an effort to speed up deliveries and reduce costs. The company rapidly expanded its fulfillment and transportation operations during the pandemic, which “ended up fundamentally changing the nodes and connections” of the network, CEO Andy Jassy said on Amazon’s first-quarter earnings call.
Amazon has now set up eight regional hubs in smaller geographic areas to ship products over shorter distances, he said. Traditionally, Amazon operated a national fulfillment network which meant that goods could be shipped from one warehouse to another at opposite ends of the country if, for example, a product was out of stock.
The move is part of Jassy’s broader effort to cut costs across the company as Amazon confronts a tough economy and slows growth at several of its businesses. Amazon has laid off 27,000 employees, initiated a corporate hiring freeze and scrapped some further initiatives.
Nick is the latest high-profile Amazon executive to leave the company. Chris Vonderhaar, a vice president in charge of Amazon Web Services data centers, is leaving the company, GeekWire reported Monday. Amazon executives overseeing the Alexa and hardware research and development groups resigned last October. Amazon’s workplace health and safety chief also announced her departure last September.
Last July, public policy chief Jay Carney left to join Airbnb, and 23-year Amazon veteran Dave Clark stepped down as head of retail a month later.
Amazon said it has hundreds of vice presidents and thousands of executives, and that the business continues to grow. The average tenure for vice presidents is about 10 years, and for senior vice presidents it is much longer, the company said.
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