Jackie Bezos, known for her unwavering support of her son Jeff Bezos long before Amazon became a household name, and for her deep commitment to early childhood education, has died at the age of 78.
The Bezos Family Foundation announced that she passed away Thursday at her Miami home. In a personal tribute, Jeff Bezos said his mother died “surrounded by so many of us who loved her” after what he described as “a long fight with Lewy body dementia.”
Jackie and her husband, Miguel Bezos, played a pivotal role in Amazon’s beginnings. In 1995, they wrote two checks totaling $245,573 to help fund the startup Jeff warned might fail. That gamble ultimately turned into an extraordinary fortune, estimated to have reached as high as $30 billion by 2018, through their early investment and later purchases of Amazon stock.
Two decades before Jeff and Amazon launched their own philanthropic efforts, Jackie and Miguel had already committed themselves to educational causes through the Bezos Family Foundation, established in 2000. The foundation’s mission reflects Jackie’s belief that “rigorous, inspired learning, in the classroom and in children’s hundreds of daily interactions with adults, will allow students from birth to high school to put their education into action.”
Under her vision, the foundation created two flagship programs: Vroom, which shares parenting tips through digital tools and other outreach, and the Bezos Scholars Program, which trains 17 students from the U.S. and Africa each year in leadership development. The foundation has also supported hundreds of other youth-focused initiatives, including a $185.7 million donation in August 2024 to the Aspen Institute to establish a new youth-focused center, its largest single gift.
In 2000, Jackie and Miguel moved to the Seattle area to be near Jeff’s growing family. While in Washington, Jackie wrote opinion columns championing early childhood education and supported a successful state voter initiative to establish charter schools. She and Miguel were also among the donors opposing a proposed state income tax, which voters ultimately rejected.
Their philanthropy extended to healthcare, with significant donations to Seattle’s Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center, including a landmark $710 million gift in 2022 given outside the foundation’s framework.
Born Jacklyn Marie Gise in Virginia on December 29, 1946, Jackie grew up in New Mexico, where her father served as a senior official at the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission. As a high school sophomore in Albuquerque, she became pregnant by Theodore Jorgensen, a senior at the school. They married in 1963, and their son, Jeffrey Preston Jorgensen, was born the following January. The marriage ended when Jeff was 17 months old, and Jackie returned to live with her parents.
Jorgensen later acknowledged his failings as both a father and husband, saying that, “it was really all my fault” and that he didn’t blame Jackie. He passed away in 2015.
Despite the challenges of being a single teenage mother, Jackie finished high school under strict conditions and later enrolled in community college, often bringing her young son to class. It was during this period, while working at the Bank of New Mexico, that she met Miguel Bezos, a Cuban-born student and refugee who had arrived in the U.S. at 16 after Fidel Castro’s revolution. Initially declining his invitations, Jackie eventually agreed to a first date, a showing of The Sound of Music.
They married in April 1968, moving to Texas where Miguel began his career as a petroleum engineer with Exxon. They had two more children, Christina and Mark. Miguel adopted Jeff, who took the Bezos surname, and Jackie cultivated a home full of board games, science projects, and storytelling.
She nurtured Jeff’s early interests, from dismantling his crib at age three to joining gifted student programs in Houston and Pensacola. “You don’t just go away,” she once said of advocating for her son’s education. “You don’t go gently. You just keep trying to convince people.”
Miguel’s career took the family around the world, including stints in Norway and Colombia, before they settled in Miami, where Jeff graduated high school. Jackie later earned a degree from the College of Saint Elizabeth in New Jersey at the age of 40.
When Jeff left his Wall Street career to start Amazon in Seattle, his parents invested much of their savings, describing it later as a bet on their son rather than on an internet bookstore. As Amazon’s stock soared after its 1997 IPO, Jackie would browse newsstands, find stories about Jeff, and leave the magazines open to the relevant page.
In later years, Jackie and Miguel divided their time between homes in Colorado, Texas, and Miami. Through it all, she remained a steadfast supporter of her family and a passionate advocate for children’s education.
