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Today, we're exploring a bit about Laurene Powell Jobs, the billionaire businesswoman and executive who is also known as Steve Jobs’ widow.

All this, and more, in just 5 minutes to read.

— Matthew

Quote of the Day

“Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.”

— Steve Jobs

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Trivia

Meet Laurene Powell Jobs

A chance encounter

In 1989, Steve Jobs visited Stanford to lecture as a guest speaker. Laurene Powell, then a first-year MBA student in her first week of graduate school, arrived late to the lecture and had to sit in the aisle at the front of the lecture hall. After the lecture, she struck up a conversation with Jobs in the parking lot.

They hit it off immediately. Steve asked her out to dinner that same day, and their relationship developed from there. They were married about a year and a half later, in March 1991.

“He was electrifying, compelling, funny, and delightful,” Powell Jobs recalled. 

That chance encounter helped set Laurene on a path to becoming worth over $15 billion today, thanks to the stake she and her husband had in Apple, the company Steve co-founded in 1976 out of his parents’ house. They had three children. Jobs died in 2011.

Today, she’s one of the largest philanthropists in the U.S., though that’s relatively unknown because she does the bulk of her charitable work and investments through Emerson Collective, an organization she founded in 2011 in which she pioneered a new model for impact that combines venture capital investing and philanthropic grant-making under one roof to accelerate solutions to complex challenges in education and economic mobility, immigration and the environment. 

The organization is a for-profit, so she can “deploy capital as smartly and usefully as I possibly could…to find the highest and best use of the next dollar.” They aren’t just philanthropists for positive social change — they also recognize the power of investing in promising startups and entrepreneurs. 

Much like MacKenzie Scott, Powell Jobs intentionally avoids the spotlight. She’d rather let the focus rest on the groups she aids. “A lot of power accrues to the giver and not as much to the organization and the leaders doing the work on the ground,” she said on the David Rubenstein Show in 2022. “I wanted to make sure we were not the story, that we were supporting the people that are the story.

“I think what I’m doing right now is the highest and best use of my time,” she added. 

Early years and intro to giving back

Powell Jobs grew up in New Jersey. When she was 3 years old, her father died in a plane crash as a marine during a training mission. That left her mother, who was 29, to care for four children under 6. 

Then Powell Jobs got her first taste of the entrepreneurial spirit that has defined much of her life. To care for her kids and support them financially, her mother started a nursery school. 

Years later, Powell Jobs graduated from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania before working on the fixed-income trading floor at Goldman Sachs. After a short while, she realized she wanted to return to school, prompting her to enroll at Stanford for graduate school. That’s where she met Jobs. 

Laurene Powell Jobs spent 22 years with her husband, Steve, until his death of pancreatic cancer in October 2011. Powell Jobs recalls Steve admiring Andrew Carnegie’s philanthropic efforts, specifically for funding the building of 2,509 "Carnegie Libraries" worldwide between 1883 and 1929.

“Having resources, information, and knowledge available to people was, for Steve, the most important thing,” she said.

On immigration

One of Emerson Collective’s core investment areas is immigration because “America benefits economically and culturally when immigrants are celebrated for their contributions,” according to the organization. Emerson invests in and develops strategies to work with partners to “advance commonsense solutions to systemic problems.”

Years ago, Powell Jobs recalled visiting a class of soon-to-be first-generation college students. They were 12th graders in East Palo Alto, California, but when she visited the class, she learned they still needed to take the SAT. Few had ever visited a college campus. It was the fall of their senior year of high school, and they hadn’t received much guidance. Many didn’t even have a Social Security number. 

Rather than a one-time visit, Powell Jobs knew she needed to do more; she promised the class she would return every Friday afternoon and be their college counselor. “That realization, that experience, changed my life,” she said. “These students were fully American, brought here as toddlers very young; they didn’t know they were undocumented in the early 2000s.”

“Every single one of us is either a direct or a descendent of an immigrant,” she added. “The whole nature of the American dream is to come here for economic and social mobility and to activate our own potential.”

On climate

One of Emerson Collective’s key focus areas is climate change. Powell Jobs and her team have plowed loads of capital into green startups, and we must act fast because “we’re in the middle of this window opportunity that will be closed within the decade,” she said during the TIME100 Summit in New York last year. 

Emerson Collective has provided resources for hundreds of young companies in climate, mostly in their seed round or Series A. The organization plans to invest half of its climate funds in U.S. causes and half in other countries to “address the pressing nature of the climate crisis between now and the early 2030s.”

Powell Jobs, a longtime California resident, knows well the threat of a warming world, including heat waves and wildfires, which are increasingly prevalent in her state. California now has “wildfire season.”

Several years ago, she was disturbed when the skies were orange for days, and residents had to wear masks to stay safe from the smoke. 

“It was bizarre, and dystopian, and truly, truly just really, really unnerving to live with,” she said. “That’s, like, where I live. But basically, everywhere, it’s getting hotter.”

What gives her hope in the face of an enormous challenge? “Innovative, creative problem solvers,” she said. “People are looking at the changing climate as an opportunity to change how they work,” and solutions are being “deeply informed by the needs of their communities, that’s very exciting.”

Through the Waverley Street Foundation, Emerson Collective is investing $3.5 billion to address the climate crisis. “There’s no need for us to spend 5% a year when the actual issue is right in front of us right now,” she said. 

Final thoughts

The following quotes are from Powell Jobs’ interviews with David Rubenstein and via the Emerson Collective’s website. 

On Emerson Collective’s name: “Both words are very meaningful to me. I’m deeply inspired by Ralph Waldo Emerson’s writings on our ability to transcend limitations that are placed on us by society. I love the word collective because it acknowledges that we are all at our best when we learn from–and work with–team members who share a sense of purpose and possibility. Like steel sharpens steel, we make each other better. With the name Emerson Collective, we recognize that humanity is bound together and that we can create new possibilities by drawing on one another’s gifts and talents.”

On education: “At its best, the public education system is an engine for social and economic mobility. But we all know it doesn’t always work that way. Education is not an isolated or siloed domain. It connects to a broader set of systems that touch people’s lives, including immigration, health, environment and economic opportunities.”

On Steve at Apple: “He was quite accustomed to Apple being the David to the rest of the industry’s Goliaths. They had a culture of being rebels and thinking about things differently. I did have the great fortune of seeing some of the products (before release). He didn’t bring them home, but I could visit them occasionally in the design studio. We talked about Apple and its business almost every night. That was a great joy for me.”

On finding ideas: “Great ideas come from everywhere. I read all my own emails. It can be several hundred a day. I’m always sending different ideas to team members or responding. We say ‘no’ an awful lot, but every now and then, we find someone who’s doing something remarkable. I will happily go through hours and hours of people pitching me ideas to find that one gem.”

Dive deeper

Read more about Jobs, follow her on X, or check out Emerson Collective.

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