At
least some members of the Grand Challenge group were chosen
through an internal competition called Think Big, according
to people familiar with the team. The annual event, open to
all full-time employees, is designed to "help find the next
big opportunities for Amazon," one person said. ("Think Big"
is one of the 14
leadership principles at Amazon.)
The
finalists get to present their ideas in front of Amazon's
most senior leaders, including CEO Jeff
Bezos, and the winners get to join the Grand Challenge
team with their own budget for recruiting, another person
said.
Think
Big is run by a team called Department of Ideas, which is
part of Grand Challenge, according to internal documents.
H.B. Siegel, the former CTO of IMDb, calls himself the
"Prime Minister of Ideas" on his LinkedIn
page and mentions that he's part of
the Department of Ideas.
Siegel
is one of 12 people within Grand Challenge who report
directly to Parviz. Two general characteristics of those
leaders are a strong background in health care and
experience working at Google X.
Here's
the full list of Parviz's direct reports:
H.B.
Siegel: Director of Engineering.
Adam
Siegel: Former Google X researcher and co-founder of Skye
Health, a health solution start-up that came out of Stanford
University. His LinkedIn
profile says he's, "working on a
special project. Super cool stuff."
David
Heckerman: Distinguished
scientist at Amazon who's spent 24
years at Microsoft and served as chief data scientist at
genomics start-up Human Longevity.
Douglas
Weibel: Former Google X researcher, professor at the
University of Wisconsin, Chemistry PhD and co-founder of two
health-related start-ups.
Erin
Smith: Executive Assistant
Hamid
Al-Azzawe: Former CTO and head of R&D at Bloomberg and
founder of AdaptCore Health, a patient management solution
maker. His LinkedIn
profile says, "Director Alexa
Personal Data."
Jean
Wang: Former hardware engineer at Google X and PhD from the
University of Washington, where she studied under Parviz.
Her LinkedIn
page says she's "developing new
projects."
Kristen
Helton: PhD in bioengineering from the University of
Washington and co-founder of Profusa, which develops
real-time biosensors to help people monitor their health.
Her LinkedIn
profilesays she's an initiative lead helping build "a
small team of passionate people focused on changing the
world for the better."
Neal
Patel: Former program lead at Google's Advanced Technology
and Projects (ATAP) team.
Sailesh
Chutani: Executive entrepreneur-in-residence at Amazon and
former CEO of ultrasound imaging company Mobisante.
According to his LinkedIn
profile, his role is to "identify and incubate
confidential new businesses for Amazon in a significant
industry."
Taha
Kass-Hout: FDA's first chief health informatics officer,
former chief digital health and intelligence officer at
Trinity Health. His LinkedIn
page doesn't mention Amazon.
Wasiq
Bokhari: Former CEO of a "special project" at Google and
Physics PhD. His LinkedIn
profile says he's been at Amazon
since May 2017, but doesn't provide a job title or
description.