Amazon’s top retail executive, who has spent the last two decades building the company’s powerful logistics operations, has moved to Highland Park.
Dave Clark, CEO of Amazon worldwide consumer, moved to Texas last fall after selling his $14.5 million home in the Seattle suburb of Medina. An Amazon spokeswoman confirmed the move to The Dallas Morning News.
The move was first reported Thursday by Business Insider, which suggested the relocation was due to a new state tax law in Washington. Washington has imposed a 7% state tax on capital gains starting this year.
Clark owns more than $46 million of Amazon shares. According to the most recent proxy statement, he had 2,021 shares and then received a stock award of 10,066 shares last year. He received a restricted award of 4,000 shares in 2020 that vest over four years starting in 2023.
If that was his motivation, it wouldn’t be the first high-profile move to Texas by an individual, led by Elon Musk’s resettling to Austin from California in 2020. Companies have been moving to Texas for decades for its business climate.
Clark now oversees Amazon’s retail business with more than 1 million employees working in logistics, its third-party Marketplace, and its own e-commerce and store operations that include Austin-based Whole Foods Market and its own Amazon Fresh grocery stores. Amazon has been trying to become a bigger force in the lucrative grocery business, which is dominated by Walmart.
Clark, 48, has been at Amazon since 1999 in U.S. and global logistics and was promoted to his current job in January 2021 after the retirement of Jeff Wilke, who many had believed might succeed Amazon founder Jeff Bezos.
He’s been the key executive behind building Amazon’s speedy delivery service that now includes its own cargo airline, truck delivery service and vast warehouse operations.
In an economic impact report released in August, Amazon said it had 37,000 employees in Dallas-Fort Worth and more than 70,000 statewide.
Clark, who was raised in Florida and Georgia, is a 1996 Auburn University graduate. He went to work for Amazon after completing an MBA in logistics and transportation at the University of Tennessee. He majored in music at Auburn and taught junior high for a year before heading to graduate school.
In an interview with an Auburn alumni publication in 2017 and reported in Fortune when he was promoted to his current job, Clark said he started working in retail in high school at his parents’ carpet store and at Service Merchandise and Publix supermarkets.
Twitter: @MariaHalkias
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