Builders Day brings AWS culture to life

Angelica Turner, a principal program manager for AWS inclusion, diversity, & equity, helped organize an area at the event featuring information about Amazon’s employee affinity groups, including the Black Employee Network and Asians at Amazon. She gasped with excitement when she recognized a colleague, Vena Rainwater, who she had never met in person.

Since joining AWS, she has felt a sense of belonging even as many teams have remained in remote or hybrid roles since the pandemic, but she said Builders Day was a chance to see the company’s culture and Amazon Leadership Principles come to life.

"When you join AWS, you're joining a community, you're not joining a company," she said.

Revanth Tummala, a software development engineer, joined AWS pre-pandemic and said the last two years have felt mellow without a lot of in-person or office time. But Builders Day was one of the first opportunities he’s had since the pandemic to see a lot of other builders in one place. He even discovered that an old friend who he hadn’t seen in seven years now works for Amazon.

“It’s really exciting,” he said.

Throughout the day, AWS Builders roamed back and forth between the food vendors and a small stage for the opportunity to hear from AWS leadership about their own career journeys and what they’ve been able to build at AWS. It was an opportunity to see these leaders in real life when most have been used to seeing them on video calls or internal broadcasts of company events since the start of the pandemic.

“I love the fireside chats—there’s a lot of talent (at AWS) and a lot of stuff to learn about,” Tummala said.

Leaders shared personal stories about their career journeys and described the bigger picture of what employees are collectively building together, such as Kara Hurst, vice president of Worldwide Sustainability at Amazon, talking about how AWS is working to help customers around the world make their businesses more sustainable.

Lovish Chum, an applied scientist with AWS Computer Vision, valued the opportunity to hear leaders’ perspectives about the business. He got a seat close to the stage when it was time to hear the senior leaders from within his org—Swami Sivasubramanian, vice president of Database, Analytics and Machine Learning, and Peter DeSantis, senior vice president of AWS Utility Computing and Applications.

“It’s so good to hear the perspectives of people who have been working in Amazon for so long,” Chum said. “Their words of wisdom are inspirational to people like me who are starting out in their careers.”

AWS builders put together packages for Clean the World, an organization that distributes hygiene products to underserved communities around the world. The event was one of more than 200 volunteer opportunities around Seattle between Aug. 15 to Sept. 16, Amazon’s Global Month of Volunteering.