Dave Clark, senior vice president of worldwide operations for Amazon, accepted the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, Accomplished Alumni Award on Sept. 29 during his visit to the Haslam College of Business.
Clark is responsible for Amazon’s global supply chain and logistics operation. He also oversees the teams managing Amazon’s technology, including its robotics operations.
“I found my time in the MBA program at Tennessee to be incredibly rewarding because the faculty and peers that I got to work with were really special,” Clark said. “The optimization science work that I got to do with Mary Holcomb and Melissa Bowers combined classwork with work for real-world companies and taught me things I’ve leveraged throughout my career. Understanding that analytics play such an important role in the supply chain overall was an incredible gift that Tennessee gave me.”
Stephen L. Mangum, dean of the Haslam College of Business and Stokely Foundation Leadership Chair, described Clark as a prime example of what Haslam alumni can accomplish.
“Haslam alumni can be found leading and managing in complex environments throughout the world,” Mangum said. “Imagine being responsible for more than 230,000 employees operating out of hundreds of locations spread across 16 countries. That is Dave Clark’s everyday world.”
Clark graduated from Haslam in 1999 with an MBA focused on logistics and transportation. He joined Amazon later that year. He held various key positions in the company prior to his current role. He also holds a bachelor’s degree in music education from Auburn University.
The Accomplished Alumni Award, a university-wide distinction, offers notable alumni an opportunity to share their success stories on campus with current students. Past recipients have included CEOs of major corporations, Olympians, authors, artists, musicians, civic leaders and United States ambassadors.
