Jeff Blackburn, a senior executive at Amazon, is taking a year-long leave of absence from the company. He will leave in early 2020 and be back by 2021.
“Jeff Blackburn has decided to take a one-year sabbatical with his wife and extended family following more than 21 years at Amazon, leading everything from our third-party business, to Prime Video, Amazon Studios, Amazon Music, and Amazon Advertising. Jeff’s sabbatical will begin in early 2020, and we look forward to welcoming him back in 2021,” Amazon’s spokesperson said.
Blackburn, a senior vice president and one of Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos’s closest advisers, is in charge of Amazon’s entertainment, business development and advertising businesses. He joined Amazon in 1998 just a few years after the company was founded, and worked on product development and operations.
“It’s never easy to find a good time for a break when always scaling so fast, but now feels like the right time for me and my family,” Blackburn wrote in an internal email, according to Geekwire, which first reported on Blackburn’s decision to take a leave of absence.
Blackburn is a member of Amazon’s “S-Team,” the inner circle of the most senior executives at the company. Other members of Amazon’s senior leadership include Amazon Web Services CEO Andy Jassy and Jeff Wilke, CEO of global consumer.