Written by Rye Barcott, Co-Founder and Chair, CFK Africa
On August 14, I received a call as I drove my mother to the airport. I put the phone on speaker, and we received the news from a friend that Jacklyn Gise Bezos—Mama Jackie to us—had passed away at age 78 from Lewy Body Dementia. It is the same incurable disease that took the life of my mentor and co-founder of With Honor, David Gergen, earlier this year.
We shared memories about Mama Jackie and the impact she had made on so many lives, including our own. The next morning, I awoke at 3 a.m. thinking about her. She will forever be an inspiration to me, and I hope to many others, especially kids facing challenging times, and young parents feeling overwhelmed, desperately wanting to do the right thing.
Jackie dedicated her life to helping children. That work began early, when she became a single parent at age 17. Nearly 50 years later, I recall her pointing out an old gray locker in her office.
Her high school tried to prevent her from continuing her education.
“It didn’t make any sense to me,” she said. “So I pushed back, and I kept on pushing back.”
Jackie persevered, earned her degree, started college, and met and married Mike Bezos, a Cuban refugee chasing the American dream. She then put her college dreams on hold to support Mike’s career and their growing family.
Decades later, she returned to school and graduated with a bachelor’s degree in psychology at what is now the University of Saint Elizabeth. She was 45 years-old.
“I had never been more proud of myself,” she said in a commencement address to a college focused on adult learning in 2019. “I felt 10 feet tall. Now that’s a gain of five feet. So, that’s a pretty big gain from a graduation!”
(Her address can be viewed here starting at 1:05.)
I first met Jackie and Mike in 2009 at a TED Conference in Long Beach. They supported the inaugural TED Fellowship for young social entrepreneurs and artists around the world. They joined and engaged with the fellows. We had no idea who they really were, apart from being generous supporters of the fellowship who seemed always to be at one another’s side.
“They have kind faces,” I recall a fellow observing on his first impression of Jackie and Mike together. They were enjoying a conversation with another fellow from our class, William Kamkwamba, the 21 year-old Malawian author of The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind, which today inspires hundreds of thousands of students in middle schools across America.
I had recently left active duty in the Marine Corps to attend graduate school on a scholarship created by David Gergen. I spent my spare time volunteering with the NGO I had co-founded in Nairobi, Kenya, Carolina for Kibera (CFK Africa), to support young leaders living in extreme poverty in African slums affected by ethnic violence.
I loved TED talks and the old motto of the conference: Ideas worth spreading. So I applied for the fellowship and hoped to give a TED talk about the idea that animated CFK: talent is universal, opportunity is not. Amazing moments can happen when resilient youth in tough circumstances connect with opportunities that cost next to nothing.
Jackie loved that truism—talent is universal; opportunity is not. Mike mentioned he had seen it throughout his life, though it would be many years before I learned about his remarkable journey defying the odds and making the most of opportunities.
Jackie spoke with me about her father, Lawrence Preston Gise. His life of service began with four years on a Navy destroyer in WWII, followed by work in the VA and the Department of Defense’s Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). There, Gise worked on space technology and ballistic missile defense as the agency was also building ARPANET, a pioneering computer network that became the precursor to the internet. He concluded his career supervising the Los Alamos, Sandia, and Lawrence Livermore Labs, then retired to a ranch in South Texas.
Jackie’s three children spent summers on the ranch learning from his do-it-yourself problem-solving, resilience, and grit. She once shared with me a funny story about how her father lost part of his finger in an accident on the ranch. He tossed the bit into a bush, not knowing the doctors could have sewn it back on. They took a piece of flesh from his rear-end, created a skin graft, and sewed it to his finger. He never complained about it, though he had to shave the finger frequently because it grew butt hair.
I shared with Jackie that her father reminded me of my father’s first commanding officer in the Marines, Lieutenant Colonel R.J. O’Leary. Colonel O’Leary earned a battlefield commission on Iwo Jima and received three Purple Hearts that he never spoke about from WWII, Korea, and Vietnam. He retired and started a second chapter on the Padlock Cattle Ranch in Wyoming. On his suggestion, the Padlock hired me for a summer job when I was fifteen and in need of direction. I pushed through the first summer, and went back for two more. Those summers and the force of his example shaped my life in profound ways. WWII veterans like Gise and O’Leary loved hard and lived without excuses.
Jackie loved to read and served as an early reader of a manuscript I wrote for students about service. Years later, she and Mike hosted one of the first book events celebrating its publication at their community center on Mercer Island.
In her warm introduction, she spoke about talent, opportunity, and the story of my co-founder at CFK Africa, the late Tabitha Atieno Festo. A widowed nurse and mother of four in the Kibera slum of Nairobi, Kenya, Tabitha took a grant of just $26 from me in 2000 and started a medical clinic. Tabitha also lived with a no-excuses attitude. Her motto for the clinic, hand-painted on a sign in front of the 10X10-foot shack where she lived, read “Sacrificing for Success.”
Today, CFK’s Tabitha Clinic treats more than 30,000 patients a year. It has one of the only high-caliber maternity centers that is accessible 24/7, and which also includes a malnutrition prevention program, thanks to a suggestion by Jackie.
In 2017, after a few years in business, I saw the beginning of a surge of post 9-11 veterans running for elected office across the U.S. They faced many challenges given the high opportunity and financial costs to run for office at a young age in an increasingly toxic environment. I decided to co-founded With Honor to fight the polarization tearing our country apart by recruiting, electing, and supporting a coalition of veterans who pledged to serve with integrity, civility, and courage, including the courage to work across party lines. I visited with Jackie and Mike for lunch and told them about the idea.
“I know success when I see it,” Jackie said. She and Mike contributed seed funding, and Mike later joined our Advisory Board. You never forget those who believe in you from the beginning and stick with you through the rollercoaster of entrepreneurship.
Jackie often started our meetings together by asking about my family. She delighted in seeing kids grow, and she loved to offer tips for things to do together. Before my family took a trip to Norway, she handed me a handwritten note of Norwegian sayings our kids could learn to build rapport. Mike told me about how Jackie created a program called Teen Advantage for American and Norwegian students to bond and learn from one another when they lived in Norway, one of 13 locations they lived in around the world while raising their family. Jackie hustled to raise money from American companies to support the effort. She knew what it took to put yourself out there and build something from nothing.
I last time I saw Jackie was in the summer of 2023 at her home with high school students from the U.S. and Africa for one of her favorite events: the annual Bezos Scholars Talent Show. Although Jackie was moving more slowly, she appeared fulfilled as she watched students showcase their skills and their newfound friendship together. My mother joined me that evening. They held hands as they spoke. In her typical selfless and caring way, the last words I heard from Jackie were a thank you to my mother for her career as a professor of nursing.
I thought of Jackie a lot this summer. My 15-year-old firstborn, Charlotte, embarked on a journey to face her anxiety, befriend, and help share the stories of a group of 30 teen mothers in a rehabilitation program at CFK.
My mother, wife, and I joined Charlotte at the end of the seven-day retreat in Kenya. The group of teen mothers spoke about the stereotypes they faced carrying through with their pregnancies, despite the terrifying circumstances. They have few earthly possessions, and many have been estranged from their families, but they have the love of their child and support from CFK to stay in school.
Each teen mother received a phone and learned about Vroom, a remarkable free app that Jackie created to help parents with tips for daily, no-cost activities they can do with their babies and young children that are fun and help “build brains.” While raising my own three kids in the haze of the early childhood years, I sometimes texted with Jackie about how the app helped me be a better father.
Jackie rarely spoke publicly. But on the launch of Vroom in 2015, she gave an address where she spoke of its origin story and the values that propelled her life’s work. She said:
Zero to five is the most rapid period for brain development in our lifetime. What promotes these connections? What makes them strong? Positive interactions between young children and adults in their lives, such as parents, caregivers, teachers, and grandparents, are essential. Everyone has a role to play. Simple exchanges like counting toes, or pointing to something and sparking a conversation, even when the baby can’t talk yet. Those simple exchanges are brain fertilizer.
(Her full remarks can be viewed here.)
I wish Jackie could have been with us two weeks ago in Africa. In a certain way, she was, as the teen moms learned from what she had created and drew inspiration from her life’s story. She will continue to be present in memory and spirit for that group and many more children and parents getting a boost from her often anonymous generosity and her powerful and kind example.
Thank you, Mama Jackie.
*** You can read more about Jackie and view the memorial page on the Bezos Scholars Program website, linked here.