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  • Joy Covey, Amazon’s First CFO, Dies In Bike Accident

    Joy Covey, Amazon’s First CFO, Dies In Bike Accident

    Joy Covey, a big part in the success of Amazon’s business, has died at the age of 50. She was riding her bike in San Francisco when it happened. She was an entrepreneur and contributed to Amazon’s massive expansion, becoming their first CFO. She has been described as a self-made woman, tech entrepreneur, and intellectual powerhouse. She has a long history of working in the tech sector and got there using her intellect and highly driven work ethic.

    Covey joined Amazon as its CFO in 1996, after already working as the CFO for the digital-audio start-up called Digidesign, according to CNET. Covey has quite the success story after dropping out of high school and leaving home when she was only 15. Shortly after that, she decided to go to college at the age of 17. She graduated in two and a half years from Fresno State and then went on to Harvard in order to get dual Law and MBA degrees.

    Covey was named one of Fortune Magazine’s 50 Most Powerful Business Women during her time working for Amazon. She was very profitable in her time as the CFO and Fortune even described her greatest feat as convincing Wall Street that a profitless company was worth $22 billion. Amazon’s business is constantly growing and even features their own television shows and streaming services, as of recently.

    At the time of her death, Covey was working as the treasurer for the National Resources Defense Council. After leaving Amazon, she was a deeply committed environmentalist and helped form the Beagle Foundation, which funded a two year fellowship with the NRDC for Harvard Law School graduates. Frances Beinecke, the president of the NRDC spoke very highly of Covey’s work, saying “Her adventurous and indomitable spirit was infectious and she constantly challenged us to reach greater heights.” It is no surprise, being the environmentalist that she is, that she was riding her bike when she died.

    The accident happened in San Francisco and the San Francisco Chronicle reports that she was riding northbound around 1:30 p.m. on Wednesday when a Southbound Mazda minivan turned left onto Elk Hill Road, forcing a head-on collision, that resulted in Covey losing her life shortly after. The driver wad a 22 year old male. Art Montiel, the California Highway Patrol Officer that was on the scene said “She was wearing a helmet, but the injuries were too severe.” She was pronounced dead on the scene and there was nothing that the paramedics could do.

    She was very helpful to both organizations that she worked for and she will be forever missed by friends and family. Covey leaves behind her son Tyler, who is eight years old.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KUkhdjf32-8

    Image via Youtube

  • Facebook Launches New Social Energy App

    A new app from the National Resources Defense Council, OPOWER, and Facebook wants to make saving energy a social experience – a perhaps even a little bit of a competition.

    The app, OPOWER analyzes your energy use based on your house and its features and compares that to similar homes in the area, as well as your Facebook friends. From Facebook:

    Today we’re announcing a new social energy app, developed in partnership with the National Resources Defense Council and OPOWER. With an initial reach of 20 million households, the app allows people to quickly and easily start benchmarking their home’s energy use against similar homes. People can also compare their energy use with friends, enter energy-saving competitions and share tips on becoming more energy efficient.

    Once you allow OPOWER to connect to Facebook, you create your “home profile.” That includes answering questions about your residence like location, sq. footage, type of A/C system, amount of fireplaces, etc. They take all of this and compare it against your monthly bills.

    From this, you’re given a little mini report about your energy consumption compared to all similar homes in your area and with homes that qualify as “efficient.”

    OPOWER Facebook social energy app

    The app also has tips for ways to save, like replacing an old refrigerator or avoiding over-drying clothes.

    All of this can be done without any connection to Facebook, really. But the social aspect of the app of course requires Facebook. OPOWER lets you see how you rank compared to all your Facebook friends that also use the app. You can also share “accomplishment” to Facebook, for instance if your energy consumption went down 5% from March to April.

    If your local utility company is supported by OPOWER, you can link it, which makes tracking your energy-saving progress a little bit easier.

    I guess the idea is that turning the energy conservation into a social experience will help people get into it even more. Do you think that a little bit of gamification can help people remember to flip off their lights when they leave? Let us know in the comments.

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