Featured Interview With Chadd SJ Ciccarelli
Tell us a little about yourself. Where were you raised? Where do you live now?
Chadd Ciccarelli is a former touring musician, global executive, and lifelong storyteller. Raised in Pittsburgh, he graduated from Carnegie Mellon University with University Honors as a Philosophy major and was inducted into both Phi Beta Kappa and Phi Kappa Phi Honor Society.
Over the course of 12+ years at Amazon, Chadd built and led international teams across London, Seattle, Los Angeles, and Sydney, helping launch several of the company’s most impactful global programs. He was also part of Zillow during its IPO journey and contributed to the expansion of Sumerian Records into broader areas of entertainment.
A passionate traveler who has explored more than 60 countries, Chadd now resides in Balmain, Australia. He is the founder of the Chadd SJ Ciccarelli Student Award at CMU’s Dietrich College of Humanities and Social Sciences and the author of It’s All Trash ‘Til It’s Cash: Applying Amazon’s Blueprint for Builders.
At what age did you realize your fascination with books? When did you start writing?
Books have been part of my life for as long as I can remember. As a kid, I was hooked on Dr. Seuss—I must’ve read Green Eggs and Ham a million times. I was drawn to the rhythm, the wild imagination, and how playful language could carry big ideas.
As I got older, I found Camus and Dostoevsky—writers who didn’t just tell stories but wrestled with the human condition. Their work cracked something open for me. It wasn’t just about reading for fun anymore. I was reading to understand how the world worked, and more importantly, why we think the way we do.
When I arrived at Carnegie Mellon, I didn’t have a clear path in mind. But I knew one thing: if I could learn how to solve hard problems, I’d be ready for anything. That led me to a Philosophy degree, where I immersed myself in the Philosophy of Science. CMU had some of the best thinkers in the world in that space—Clark Glymour, Preston King Covey, and Wesley Salmon. Their ideas challenged everything I thought I knew about logic, truth, and systems.
That mindset followed me into my career. One of the first things I did when I joined Amazon was ask senior leadership what books had shaped them. I’d go out and read every title they mentioned—books like Tim Ferriss’s Tools of Titans, which gave me a toolkit for productivity, mindset, and high-performance habits. For me, reading has never been passive. It’s how I’ve leveled up at every stage of my life.
Writing came later, but naturally. I started putting thoughts on paper as a way to make sense of what I’d learned and experienced—both in business and in life. Over time, it evolved into a craft. Now, I write to share the lessons, the scars, and the frameworks that helped me build a life and career on my own terms.
Who are your favorite authors to read? What is your favorite genre to read. Who Inspires you in your writings?
I’m really drawn to non-fiction and biographies—books that pull back the curtain on someone’s real story, flaws and all. Greenlights by Matthew McConaughey is one of my all-time favorites. It’s poetic, raw, and unexpectedly profound. I also loved Too Fat to Fish by Artie Lange—before everything went sideways for him, that book was brutally honest and hilarious. Private Parts by Howard Stern is another classic—it captured a voice that felt completely unfiltered and unapologetic.
At the same time, I find myself revisiting timeless handbooks like Meditations by Marcus Aurelius or The Art of War. There’s something grounding about those texts—they’ve survived for a reason.
When I started writing my first book, It’s All Trash ’Til It’s Cash, I didn’t want to just tell my story—I wanted to create something useful. A book you could reference, mark up, come back to when you’re stuck. It’s a blend of personal journey and practical tools, inspired by the books that helped shape my own thinking.
In terms of inspiration, I’m drawn to voices that are honest, curious, and a little rebellious—people who aren’t afraid to say the quiet part out loud and still leave you with something you can use.
Tell us a little about your latest book?
It’s All Trash ’Til It’s Cash is based on my 12-year journey at Amazon, where I worked across four countries—London, Seattle, Los Angeles, and Sydney. The book is part memoir, part playbook. It captures the lessons I learned while being constantly thrown into situations I wasn’t technically qualified for—but had to figure out anyway.
Amazon has this reputation for being a corporate machine, but one of the most misunderstood things about it is that it still operates like a giant startup—just one backed by a publicly traded company. That mindset shaped everything I learned and ultimately what I put into this book.
I wrote it to be both a story and a blueprint. It covers the things no one really trains you for—how to interview effectively, how to launch a new product or idea, how to build something from scratch using Amazon’s “Working Backwards” method. These are the same tools I used to build global programs and lead teams around the world.
If you’re a founder, builder, or someone trying to create something real in a noisy world, this book was written for you. It’s meant to be something you can go back to again and again—not just read once and shelve.
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