Country music star and philanthropist, Dolly Parton got $100 million from Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and his partner, Lauren Sanchez on November 12.
“What she’s done for kids, literacy and so many other things is just incredible,” the Amazon founder said.
Dolly Parton is getting recognized for the Bezos Courage and Civility Award beyond her “9 to 5” of being the queen of country music.
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Ironically, Amazon is planning to fire 10,000 employees starting as soon as this week, reports New York Times.
The award recognizes “leaders who aim high, find solutions and who always do it with civility,” Sanchez said. She added the awardees can direct the $100 million to the charities that they see fit.
“The woman you’re about to meet embodies these ideals so thoroughly. She gives with her heart. What she’s done for kids, literacy and so many other things is just incredible,” Bezos said before presenting Parton with the award.
“Wow, did you say a $100 million?” Parton, 76, asked after Bezos announced her as the 2022 recipient. “When people are in a position to help, you should help, and I know that I’ve always said I try to put my money where my heart is.”
The “Jolene” singer added in a tweet that she will “do my best to do good things with this money.”
Parton hasn’t announced what she will do with the prize, but she has many philanthropic projects of her own. In 2020, she donated $1 million to Vanderbilt University, which partially funded the development of Moderna’s COVID-19 vaccine.
“I’m just happy that anything I do can help somebody else, and when I donated the money to the COVID fund, I just wanted it to do good,” she told TODAY in 2020. “Evidently, it is. Let’s just hope we find a cure real soon.”
She also became one of the first celebrities to get the vaccine in March 2021, tweeting a video of her receiving the shot with the caption, “Dolly gets a taste of her own medicine.
Beyond her COVID-19 efforts, Parton’s Dollywood Foundation donated $1,000 per month to families impacted by wildfires in Tennessee in 2016, and those payments continued for six months. And in 1995, she founded Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library, a literacy program that’s donated more than 150 million children’s books.
And Bezos’ award isn’t the only award she’s received this year. Parton was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame earlier this month, even after she tried to turn down the nomination because she felt she wasn’t “worthy” of the honor.
Parton later told NPR she would accept the nomination after all, once she found out it wasn’t exclusively for rock stars.
“I just felt like I would be taking away from someone that maybe deserved it, certainly more than me, because I never considered myself a rock artist,” she said. “But obviously, there’s more to it than that.
Amazon to lay off 10,000 employees
Amazon is planning to lay off thousands of employees and implement cost-cutting measures as last few quarters haven’t been profitable, according to reports.
The company could fire as many as 10,000 employees starting as soon as this week, reports New York Times.
If the total number of layoffs stays around 10,000, it would be the biggest layoff in the history of Amazon. It would represent less than 1 per cent of the workforce of a company that employs over 1.6 million globally.
The job cuts will target the devices group, including the one responsible for the Alexa voice assistant, along with the retail division and human resources, NYT reported citing anonymous sources.
The report comes just weeks after the e-commerce giant warned of a slowdown in growth for the busy holiday season, a period when it used to generate the highest sales. Amazon said this was because consumers and businesses have less money to spend due to rising prices.
The world’s largest online retailer has spent much of this year adjusting to a sharp slowdown in e-commerce growth as shoppers resumed pre-pandemic habits. Amazon delayed warehouse openings and froze hiring in the retail group.
Amazon Chief Executive Officer Andy Jassy has vowed to streamline operations amid slowing sales growth and economic uncertainty.
The Alexa division has long been vulnerable to downsizing because the group’s voice-activated devices have yet to become must-have gadgets and often wind up in consumers’ closets.
After experiencing its “most profitable era on record” during the COVID-19 pandemic years, which saw exponential growth in online consumer spending, “Amazon’s growth slowed to the lowest rate in two decades, as the bullwhip of the pandemic snapped,” the NYT report said.
Amazon is the latest technology company to make deep cuts to its employee base to brace for a potential economic downturn.
Last week, Twitter cut roughly 50% of its workforce following its sale to Elon Musk.
