David Zapolsky

As Senior Vice President, General Counsel, and Secretary of Amazon, David Zapolsky manages a broad range of domestic and international legal, compliance, and regulatory affairs for the company.  Before becoming General Counsel in 2012, he served for thirteen years as Associate General Counsel, leading Amazon’s Litigation and Regulatory group and advising on a wide variety of litigation, privacy, consumer protection, competition law, securities regulation, intellectual property, and labor and employment matters.  
 
Prior to joining Amazon in 1999, Zapolsky was a litigation partner in the Seattle offices of Dorsey & Whitney and Bogle & Gates.  He moved to Seattle in 1994 from New York, where he served as an Assistant District Attorney in the Brooklyn District Attorney’s Office, focusing primarily on sex crimes, child abuse, and domestic violence prosecutions, and an associate at Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz, where he practiced securities litigation and white collar defense.  He is a graduate of Berkeley Law and Columbia College.    
 
In addition to his work at Amazon, Zapolsky is active in several civic, educational, and legal organizations that, among other things, seek to promote diversity and pro bono work in the legal profession.  He serves as a Trustee of the King County Bar Foundation, a Member of the Kids in Need of Defense (KIND) Washington State Advisory Committee, a Director of the Berkeley Law Alumni Association, a Corporate Advisory Member of the National Legal Aid & Defender Association, a Member of the Leaders Council for the Legal Services Corporation, and a Director of Seattle’s Alliance for Education and the University of Washington Foundation.  In 2013, he founded the Amazon legal department’s pro bono initiative, also known as the Amazon Justice League, which encourages and enables Amazon attorneys and legal professionals around the world to donate thousands of hours of pro bono legal work each year.