Laurene Powell Jobs is the widow of Steve Jobs, the founder of Apple. Lauren was born in November 1963. Today, Lauren Elaine Powell is recognized as the richest woman in Silicon Valley. Her fortune is estimated at $20 billion. Today, being the widow of Steve Jobs, Lauren continues to be involved in business and philanthropic activities.
It’s best to start a biography of Lauren Powell with a story about the woman’s childhood. Lauren was born in 1963 in New Jersey. Lauren's father died heroically when he flew a malfunctioning plane and prevented the plane from crashing over residential areas. He served in the US Marine Corps.
Lauren's mother remarried. However, the marriage turned out to be a nightmare. For almost 10 years, four children, including Lauren herself, lived in fear. In the future, Powell admitted that she learned an important lesson from childhood - to always be independent. Every day Lauren looked forward to going to university and leaving home.
After graduating from school, Lauren Powell entered the University of Pennsylvania, completing a bachelor's degree in the Faculty of Arts, followed by a bachelor's degree in Faculty of Economics. After studying at the university, Lauren got a job as a transaction specialist at Goldman Sachs, where she worked with large financial flows. Even having good career prospects, Lauren soon leaves her job. She dreamed of building a business that she would like. Lauren goes to Florence for inspiration. The girl lived there for almost a year. After returning to the United States, she attends Stanford Business School. It was there that Lauren Powell met Steve Jobs. Steve Jobs was invited as a lecturer at Stanford, but one of the classes the creator of the IPhone saw Lauren. The couple's first date took place in a restaurant. It's worth noting that Steve was older than Lauren.
The relationship between Lauren and her lover quickly turned into a passionate romance. According to Steve, Lauren Powell was irresistible in her youth, and he was completely fascinated by her. Often, Steve and Lauren forgot that they were in the company of other people, thereby embarrassing those around them with their passionate kisses. However, on New Year's Eve there was a quarrel between the lovers. They left the restaurant where the couple celebrated the holiday separately. The next morning, Steve was already waiting for Lauren at the door with flowers. Their reconciliation ended with a marriage proposal. This happened on January 1, 1990. The girl quickly moved to her groom’s house. However, Steve, immersed in work, almost immediately forgot about the proposal. Desperate, in the fall Lauren packed her things and moved out from Jobs. After a while, Steve again tried the chance to propose to his beloved, this time he bought a diamond engagement ring and was forgiven.
In December of that year, Steve and Lauren went on a joint vacation to Steve's favorite place - Kona Village in Hawaii. There, the couple learned that Lauren was expecting a child.
The wedding of Steve Jobs and Laurene Powell took place in mid-March 1991. The wedding took place at the Ahwahnee Hotel in national park"Yosemite". The ceremony was led by a close friend of the groom, Kobun Tino Otogawa.
The couple lived together for twenty years, of which Steve Jobs was ill for the last 8 years. The creator of the legendary iPhone was sick with pancreatic cancer, and the disease took its toll. After her husband's death, Lauren became a billionaire, inheriting part of his fortune.
And although Steve Jobs' wife Lauren Powell had a hard time being married to such a husband - Steve Jobs had a lot of oddities, the woman soon also went to work. She founded the company Terravera, whose main activity was the supply of natural products to Northern California. Lauren also created the College Track organization, which is dedicated to raising the standards of secondary education; in addition, the company’s functions include supporting talented students from various nationalities. and social minorities
In 2010, by decision of the President of the United States at that time, Lauren was included in the Council on Public Issues at the White House.
Lauren Powell, in accordance with Steve Jobs' wishes, controls all trusts that hold the family's assets. Lauren is an immigration reform advocate and serves on the boards of nonprofit organizations such as NewSchools Venture Fund, Conservation International, and College Track. Moreover, as already mentioned, the College Track company was created by the widow of Steve Jobs herself. Lauren is the founder of another company, Emerson Collective. This company works with entrepreneurs to promote education and social services. justice.
Several years ago Lauren was appointed to board of trustees Stanford University. Lauren also invests in various startups, for example, as a business angel, she invested in SocialCam. Along with M. Bloomberg and R. Dalio, L. Jobs is a co-founder of the Climate Governance Council.
Powell Jobs also planned to allocate $50 million for the development of the XQ: The Super School Project. The project is aimed at reforming education from the inside, in other words, universities are offered new approach To curriculum. Lauren is the Chairman of the Board of Directors of XQ.
The businesswoman and investor is also interested in the world of professional sports: for example, she recently acquired a stake in Monumental Sports & Entertainment. The company operates the Washington Wizards and Washington Capitals teams, as well as the Capital One Arena.
Lauren is still often said to be the widow of Steve Jobs. However, many do not know that Lauren has been dating Adrian Fenty, the former mayor of Washington, DC, since 2013. The couple met in 2011 at a conference. Lauren's lover also has three children from a previous marriage.
“Lauren is a very complex person, an unapologetic idealist who does not accept any irony of her beliefs,” says author Leon Wieseltier, who is working with Steve Jobs' widow on a new biography of the entrepreneur.
Laurene Powell Jobs is the second wife of the Apple founder and heiress to his fortune (according to Forbes, it is almost $19 billion). After the death of her husband, she almost did not appear in public and gave few interviews, devoting all her attention to work and raising three children. She attracted the attention of the press only once, when she criticized the film “Steve Jobs” by Danny Boyle.
Preserving a reliable memory of her husband is not the only or main task of Powell Jobs. She has been involved in charity and educational activities for many years; it recently became known that she is starting a large-scale project that should reform American schools. “The Secret” figured out how Powell Jobs is going to change education and how this relates to the legacy of the famous entrepreneur and visionary.
After the wedding, Steve Jobs and Lauren Powell, a graduate of Stanford and the prestigious Wharton School of Business, settled in Palo Alto, where the Apple office was located. In the early 1990s, Powell Jobs founded Terravera, an organic food company. But soon raising children began to take up too much time, and the wife of the Apple CEO left her job to devote herself to her family.
Powell Jobs retired only briefly: in the mid-1990s, she met Carlos Watson, an African-American entrepreneur from a poor family who managed to enroll at Harvard and then Stanford. He founded a company called Achieva, which created online tools to help students prepare for practice tests. Powell Jobs was one of the first investors and a member of the board of directors of this company. In 1995, the young entrepreneur and wife of Steve Jobs began working with high school students from East Palo Alto, where mostly immigrant families lived.
It would seem that in a city where the offices of technology companies and the campus of Stanford University are located, it would be easy for children to find correct examples for imitation. However, Powell Jobs and Watson noticed that high school students, many of whom were African-American and Hispanic, did not understand how to get into college and were not receiving any help from their teachers and mentors. Their parents couldn’t help them either, because they themselves had only finished school. Even those teenagers who understood that they wanted to study further did not attend the classes required for admission.
After researching charities that served schoolchildren, Jobs and Watson realized that none of them were solving the problem they noticed. To help high school students, they founded College Track, an organization that now operates in eight US cities (with offices in low-income areas) and has a ten-year program of support for potential students. From 9th grade through college, College Track mentors children through paperwork assistance, leadership training, financial counseling, and grant awards.
While working at College Track, Powell Jobs realized the imperfections of the entire modern education system in the United States - it turned out that problems arise not only among high school students from disadvantaged areas. “There is a huge difference between what students want and what schools offer them,” she told the NYT. In 2004, Powell Jobs founded another educational organization- Emerson Collective. The company is named after the American poet and philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson, who is famous as the founder of transcendentalism. Adherents of this philosophical movement believed in equality between people and their ability to improve themselves. Powell Jobs always admired Emerson's ideas. “Our main goals are to give teenagers the opportunity to freely choose their destiny and live to their full potential,” the organization says on its website.
Emerson Collective is more like an investment fund than a typical nonprofit organization. The company allocated $100 million for the development of AltSchool, a project of ex-Google employee Max Ventilla. He opened a network of private schools that are known for their individual approach to each student, using new technologies and helping children better understand the curriculum. In addition, Emerson Collective invested in the online course platform Udacity ($105 million), and also recently invested in Ellevation, a company that develops user-friendly software for English teachers.
“Our educational system is designed to create labor force, which was needed 100 years ago; Now we want to start from scratch,” said Laurene Powell Jobs, announcing the launch of the XQ: The Super School Project campaign. This organization collects proposals for improving school education. In August 2016, a team of judges will determine a minimum of five winners who will receive funding (Powell Jobs allocated a total of $50 million) and will be able to build the schools of the future. Main goal project - to come up with a new type of schools that will better prepare children for life in modern world. More than 10,000 applications have already been submitted to participate in the competition.
Powell Jobs hopes to solve a problem that politicians and philanthropists have been struggling with for decades. She uses more modern method to achieve your goal. Crowdsourcing ideas should help XQ see the diversity of existing initiatives, compare them and select the best.
Laurene Powell Jobs and XQ CEO Russlyn Ali, who formerly worked at the Obama administration's Education Department, hope they can find successful and replicable models that will jump-start the broader education reform movement. Powell Jobs sees a connection between his initiatives and his husband's legacy. “Steve wanted to create tools that would help people be as productive as possible, and I think he was able to do that... We see the fruits of his work all around us all the time, and that’s very inspiring to me,” said she is in her first interview since the death of the Apple CEO.
Cover photo: Emerson Collective
In the marriage ceremony, the bride and groom swear that nothing will ever separate them except death. However, for the richest men in the world, death is not a reason to stop caring for the women they love. The Daily Mail newspaper talked about how the widow of one of the creators of the entire digital era, Steve Jobs, disposed of the inherited billions. Lenta.ru also inquired about how other widows of billionaires live.
Apple founder Steve Jobs and Stanford University graduate Lauren Powell got married in 1991, long before the release of the first iPod. Lauren, like Steve, was fond of Zen Buddhism and had a strong character, able to withstand the difficult temper of her husband. They lived together for 20 years, until the death of the Apple founder from cancer in 2011. They had daughters Erin and Eva and son Reed.
In 2016, Laurene Powell-Jobs, according to Forbes magazine, became the sixth richest woman in the world. The 52-year-old widow's fortune is estimated at $16.7 billion.
She has two private jets (worth $58.8 million and $10 million), four mansions, an 80-meter yacht worth $138 million, shares in the Walt Disney Company and Apple. Powell-Jobs's main capital is formed precisely by shares of Apple and Disney, inherited from her husband.
Since 2006, the value of her Disney holdings has nearly doubled. The Laurene Powell Jobs Trust, which she founded, is the largest shareholder of the Walt Disney Company with 7.8 percent of shares.
The widow's share in Apple is much more modest - at the moment it is about $560 million.
Lauren didn't just rest on the laurels that the Apple founder provided her with. In September 2015, she allocated about $50 million to the XQ: The Super School Project. For several months now, a team of professionals and enthusiasts has been developing the school of the future.
Jobs' widow also deals with the problem of using business as a social tool, for which she founded the Emerson Collective organization.
Photo: Neilson Barnard/The New York Times/Getty Images
Someone spends in stores, and someone earns. The second most rich woman in the world by Forbes version- Christy Walton, widow of one of the sons of the founder of Wal-Mart Corporation. An international firm runs the world's largest retail network, operating under the Walmart brand. Despite the fabulous fortune that her husband John left her, 66-year-old Christy Walton lives modestly in a small town in Wyoming.
The widow's asceticism helped her increase her fortune by five billion dollars after the death of her husband. Now she has almost 37 billion.
Many have seen the photo from the fortieth anniversary of the Nutella brand, in which the king of sweets and Ferrero founder Michele Ferrero blows out an endless number of candles on a slice of baguette generously smeared with chocolate spread. The famous Italian, with 17 billion in his account, was included in the Forbes magazine list as the richest citizen of his country.
On February 14, 2015, at the age of 90, Ferrero died. His entire fortune of $22 billion went to his wife. Maria Franca Fissolo is not too interested in the affairs of the company, the management of which Michele has transferred to the shoulders of his son Giovanni.
Steve Jobs is an American entrepreneur, inventor, and industrial designer who is widely recognized as a pioneer of the information technology era.
Jobs gained the greatest fame as one of the founders of the Apple corporation and the Pixar film studio. Many consider him a true revolutionary in the field of mobile gadgets, as well as a brilliant marketer.
In 1972, Jobs entered Reed College in Portland, but was expelled after six months. This was due to the overly expensive education, which turned out to be unaffordable for his parents.
After leaving Reed College, Steve began to become seriously interested in Eastern spiritual practices. In addition, he refused to eat meat and repeatedly experimented with fasting.
An interesting fact is that Jobs liked to spend free time with hippies, listening with them to The Beatles, who were at the peak of their popularity.
In 1975, Jobs set about improving the circuitry for a video game. He had to modernize the board, minimizing the number of chips located on it.
Atari paid $100 for the removal of each chip. But since Steve had little understanding of electronic circuit design, he was forced to turn to Wozniak.
As a rule, it took more than one month to complete such work, but he convinced his friend to complete the task in 4 days. As a result, after 4 days of intensive work, Wozniak was able to optimize the board for the game.
For such an outstanding result, the company paid Jobs $5,000, but he told his friend that he received only $700, after which he divided this amount in half.
Thus, he had quite a lot of money in his hands, which allowed him to quit his job.
When Steve Jobs turned 20, he first saw Wozniak’s computer, which he created with his own hands. Then the friends seriously thought about selling such equipment.
However, this required start-up capital. By selling some personal items, they were able to save $1,300.
After that, the guys found a customer willing to buy as many as 50 computers from them. To complete such an order, they had to take out a loan, because they needed to purchase a lot of materials.
After 10 days, the inventors managed to sell some of the computers, which they decided to call “Apple 1”. The price of each of them was $666.
At the same time, IBM began mass production of computers. Then Jobs thought about how to get ahead of his competitor and emerge victorious in this difficult race.
By that time, Wozniak was able to improve his PC, as a result of which Apple 2 was released. This model was faster and had a better design.
As a result, Apple technology began to spread throughout the world, and the number of their computers exceeded 5 million copies. This event became one of the most significant in the biography of Steve Jobs.
At the age of 25, he and his friend Steve Wozniak became millionaires.
The inventors did not stop at the achieved results, but on the contrary continued to modernize their products.
Soon a new PC "Lisa" appeared, which Steve named after his daughter.
Later, his colleagues Mark Markulla, who invested more than $250,000 in Apple, and Scott Forstall reorganized the company and decided to remove Jobs.
After his dismissal, he began collaborating with Jeff Raskin. Together with him, he wanted to create a portable machine that would be small in size and could fit into a small suitcase. This device was later called the "Macintosh".
It is worth noting that conflicts often arose between Jobs and Raskin, since Jobs was already a very demanding and principled boss.
As a result, Raskin was fired, and later, due to disagreements, John Sculley and Wozniak also quit.
Jobs then formed NeXT, a hardware company.
In 1986, he became the head of the Pixar animation studio, which produced many popular cartoons.
Soon Apple announced that it would buy NeXT for $427 million. The deal was completed in late 1996, and Jobs was introduced to the Apple team as "adviser to the chairman."
Movement immediately began to be felt in the company: production was reduced, followed by a series of personnel changes and reshuffles.
It became clear that Jobs would try to regain Apple, although he called himself only a “consultant” and in every possible way denied claims to power, citing his employment at Pixar and the need to devote more time to his family.
At the same time, Jobs quickly managed to bring people loyal to him to key positions in the company and acquired a clear reputation: he became an eminence grise at Apple.
A short time later, he received the position of manager of Apple, joining the board of directors. An interesting fact is that in 2000 Jobs was included in the Guinness Book of Records as the director with the smallest salary - $1 per year.
In 2001, Jobs introduced the world to an MP3 player called the iPod, which gained incredible popularity. The player had unique technical specifications, great design and large memory capacity.
After this, a series of striking events related to innovative developments occurred in the biography of Steve Jobs.
Apple introduced the Apple TV media player, and soon the iPhone touchscreen phone went on sale. Less than a year later, the company developed the thinnest laptop ever, the MacBook Air.
Researchers have always been interested in the question of why Apple products have long held leading positions in the global electronics market, leaving all competitors far behind.
When answering this question, it is impossible not to admit that this was only possible thanks to Steve Jobs.
Jobs attached great importance to the appearance and interface of his devices. Apple products were one of a kind and could not be confused with any other brand.
Steve always thought several steps ahead and tried to anticipate the desires of the consumer. It is worth noting that he often used other people’s developments, which he brought to perfection before implementation.
Can you remember one interesting fact from the biography of Steve Jobs, which fully reveals his talent as a marketer. In 2010, they introduced the iPad tablet as a full-fledged alternative to a laptop.
However, the public showed little interest in the gadget. The situation was further complicated by the fact that he actively advertised his netbooks, claiming that the future lay behind them.
This is where Jobs's oratorical talent showed itself. He described the iPad so masterfully that he literally forced people to buy it.
As a result, in just one year, more than 15 million people purchased the tablet, which was almost a record figure in the world.
At the age of 17, Steve Jobs met Chris Ann Brennan, who was a hippie. Together they mastered various eastern practices and also hitchhiked.
In 1978, their girl Lisa was born. An interesting fact is that Jobs initially categorically denied his paternity, stating that Chris was not only dating him. As a result of legal proceedings and a genetic test, it turned out that he was the father.
When Lisa grew up, Steve got along quite well with her, and recalled the story of denying his paternity with annoyance:
“I shouldn’t have behaved like that. Then I did not imagine myself as a father and was not ready for it. If I could change everything now, I would, of course, behave better.”
In 1982, Steve began an affair with artist Joan Baez, but their relationship ended after 3 years.
After that, he met Tina Redse, with whom he fell in love at first sight. At that time, she worked as a computer consultant, and most importantly, she was also interested in the hippie subculture.
Feelings arose between them, but things never came to a wedding. When Steve Jobs proposed to her, Tina turned him down and their relationship ended.
In 1989, Jobs met and began dating Lauren Powell, who was a bank employee. A year later they decided to get married. Later they had a boy, Reed (1991), and two girls, Erin (1995) and Eve (1998).
In October 2003, Jobs was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. The doctors unequivocally insisted on urgently operating on him.
However, he refused surgery for 9 months, preferring to use unconventional methods. Subsequently, he very much regretted it.
He gave his last speech on June 6, 2011, and on August 24 he announced his resignation as CEO of Apple.
Fully concentrating on the fight against the terrible disease, he used various treatment methods, but he was never able to defeat the disease.
Some researchers call Jobs “the greatest entrepreneur of our time,” and put him on a par with such personalities as Thomas Edison and.
Jobs statue in Graphisoft Park in Budapest In 2013, the film “Jobs: Empire of Seduction” was shot, based on facts from his biography.
In 2011, Graphisoft unveiled the world's first bronze statue of Steve Jobs, calling him one of the greatest figures of our time.
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Lauren Powell received her education at the University of Pennsylvania; She first received a bachelor's degree in arts, then a bachelor's degree in economics. In 1991, Powell received an MBA from Stanford Graduate School of Business.
Lauren married Steve Jobs on March 18, 1991; The wedding ceremony took place at the Ahwahnee Hotel in Yosemite National Park, with Zen Buddhist Kobun Chino Otogawa officiating. In September 1991, Steve and Lauren had a son, Reed; in 1995, his younger sister Erin was born, and in 1998, Lauren gave birth to a second daughter, Eve. Lauren, Steve and their children lived in Palo Alto, California.
Terravera, founded by Laurene Jobs, supplies natural products to... retail chains Northern California. In addition, Lauren sits on
Board of Directors of the Achieva project, which supplies network programs for study and additional training. It is also known that for some time Lauren worked at Merrill Lynch Asset Management and Goldman Sachs.
For some time now, Lauren Jobs has been quite actively involved in non-profit projects; She works primarily with educational groups, women's rights activists and artists. As of 2011, Lauren was listed on the boards of directors of at least seven well-known charitable companies. One of her most famous projects of this kind, of course, was non-profit organization"College Track", founded back in 1997-
m; This organization is engaged in raising the standards of school education and supporting talented students from various national and social minorities. Lauren has achieved truly impressive results - of all College Track students, approximately 90% go to college, and 70% successfully complete it within 6 years.
In December 2010, Barack Obama included Laurene Powell Jobs on the White House Council for Community Solutions; This council recommends to the president the best ways to resolve the most complex social problems (related primarily to education and employment).
