Joy Covey, former chief financial officer of Amazon credited for taking Amazon.com public, died on Wednesday at age 50, the New York Daily News reported.
The former business executive died on Sept. 18 after crashing into a minivan while riding her bicycle near Portola Valley, Calif. A spokesman for the California Highway Patrol said Covey was wearing a helmet.
Covey joined Amazon in 1996 as the chief financial officer and eventually became chief strategy officer. She was responsible for persuading investors to be patient with the company as they slowly made their way to becoming a successful online retailer.
"Except on an occasional basis when it is critical for me to deal with Wall Street, she makes it possible for me to spend a lot more of my time on the customer experience," Amazon founder and Chief Executive Officer Jeff Bezos said of Covey 1999. "But her job is not only in the CFO capacity, but somewhat broader and deeper in communicating our message to investors, which is so important to our future."
On May 14, 1997, Amazon went public with an offering price of $18.00. On Wednesday, shares closed at $312.06.
Covey made Forbes' 50 most powerful women list in 1999.
"As CFO, her feat was convincing Wall Street that a profitless company was worth $22 billion," Forbes wrote.
During an interview with a the Harvard Law Bulletin in 2002, she commented on her learning experience at Amazon.
"Our view was that most companies depart from their best long-term business thinking in order to please Wall Street. And they often do things that are not in the best long-term interest of the business because they're under pressure from investors for short-term results," Covey said.
After receiving her BA from California State University in Fresno in 1982, she completed the joint MBA-J.D. program at Harvard Law School in 1989,
