Meet investor Laurene Powell Jobs, the billionaire widow of Steve Jobs who has reportedly become a close confidant for Kamala Harris
Laurene Powell Jobs is the billionaire widow of Steve Jobs, cofounder of Apple.
Laurene Powell Jobs, the 60-year-old billionaire, is a formidable presence in investing circles, with a net worth of $11.5 billion, according to Bloomberg’s Billionaires Index.
Powell Jobs has used the fortune she inherited after the death of her husband, Apple’s cofounder Steve Jobs, to expand her own businesses and philanthropies. She has also played an active hand in politics, including quietly donating millions to an organization backing Vice President Kamala Harris, according to a new report.
Here’s a look at the life of the businesswoman and philanthropist:
Laurene Powell Jobs was born in West Milford, New Jersey, in 1963.
Powell Jobs is a New Jersey native.
Her father, a pilot, died in a plane crash when she was 3 years old. Her mother later remarried.
Powell Jobs double-majored in political science and economics at the University of Pennsylvania.
Powell Jobs pursued her undergrad degree at the University of Pennsylvania.
After graduating from the University of Pennsylvania, she worked on Wall Street for Merrill Lynch and Goldman Sachs.
She later headed west for her MBA, enrolling in Stanford’s Graduate School of Business in 1989.
Jobs and Powell Jobs met at Stanford.
It was there that she met Steve Jobs, her future husband.
According to Walter Isaacson’s biography of Jobs, Powell Jobs got dragged along to a campus event by a friend.
Jobs gave a guest lecture at Stanford that Powell Jobs attended.
It turned out to be a guest lecture by Jobs.
“This was 1989,” Powell Jobs told Isaacson. “He was working at NeXT, and he was not that big of a deal to me. I wasn’t that enthused, but my friend was, so we went.”
Powell Jobs initially mistook Jobs for another prominent tech figure, according to the biography.
Gates is Microsoft’s cofounder.
“I knew that Steve Jobs was the speaker, but the face I thought of was that of Bill Gates,” Powell Jobs told Isaacson. “I had them mixed up.”
The pair arrived late and were told they couldn’t just sit in the aisle. Powell Jobs and her friend ended up sneaking into the reserved seats at the front of the hall.
Powell jobs and Jobs ended up seated next to each other.
Jobs ended up sitting next to his future wife: “I looked to my right, and there was a beautiful girl there, so we started chatting while I was waiting to be introduced,” he said in the biography.
Powell Jobs joked that she was sitting up front because she’d won a raffle and the prize included a dinner with Jobs.
Jobs finished the lecture and chased after his future wife, who had already walked out of the hall. He found Powell Jobs in the parking lot and asked her about the raffle. She agreed to go to dinner with him on that Saturday, and they exchanged numbers.
Jobs prepared to leave for a work dinner but returned to Powell Jobs. He asked if she’d like to go to dinner that night. She agreed, and they headed to a nearby restaurant called St Michael’s Alley.
Steve Jobs and Powell Jobs during a surprise appearance for the release of the iPhone in Palo Alto in 2007.
While Jobs’ NeXT colleagues waited for their boss to show up, the tech founder and Powell Jobs spent four hours at the restaurant.
The couple remained together after that night.
They married in March 1991 at the Ahwahnee Hotel in Yosemite National Park.
The Ahwahnee Hotel at Yosemite National Park.
Other famous guests at the hotel over the years have included the late Queen Elizabeth II and former presidents John F. Kennedy and Barack Obama.
The couple had three children: Reed, Erin, and Eve.
Eve Jobs.
Eve Jobs began modeling for the beauty brand Glossier in late 2020. She is 25 years old.
Jobs also previously had a daughter, Lisa Brennan-Jobs, with his high school girlfriend, Chrisann Brennan.
When Jobs died from cancer in 2011, his wife inherited his wealth, including stakes in Apple and The Walt Disney Company. The inheritance left Powell Jobs a billionaire.
Jobs was at one point Disney’s biggest individual shareholder.
Her stake in Disney initially made her the company’s largest individual shareholder, but in 2017, she reduced her ownership to 4%.
Powell Jobs spends a lot of her fortune on philanthropy.
Powell Jobs regularly ranks among the world’s most powerful women.
Forbes named her the 25th most powerful woman in the world in 2023.
“In the broadest sense, we want to use our knowledge and our network and our relationships to try to effect the greatest amount of good,” she told The New York Times in 2013.
In 1992, she founded a health-food truck called Terravera with fellow Stanford MBA grad John Mullane.
Powell Jobs later stepped away from Terravera to focus on other efforts.
The pair sold Basmati rice platters and burritos with black bean dressing to white-collar workers in office parks. “We just wanted to offer a convenient way for them to eat healthy food,” Powell Jobs told the Chicago Tribune in 1992.
She later backed away from Terravera to focus on her volunteer work tutoring underprivileged students in East Palo Alto.
In 1997, Powell Jobs founded College Track, a nonprofit organization that helps prepare low-income students for college through tutoring and mentoring.
Laurene Powell Jobs and Will.i.am attend the i.am College Track Launch on May 19, 2016 in Los Angeles, California.
College Track now operates centers in three states and the District of Columbia.
Powell Jobs founded Emerson Collective in 2004, a “social change organization” named after one of her favorite authors, Ralph Waldo Emerson.
Ralph Waldo Emerson is one of Powell Jobs’ favorite authors.
The Emerson Collective makes grants and investments that focus on immigration, environment, journalism, gun violence reduction, race and equity, and education, according to its website.
It’s a private company rather than a traditional nonprofit and has funded several startups. The Washington Post has described it as a “kind of Justice League of practical progressives.”
Emerson Collective projects include AltSchool, a venture-capital-backed school that aimed to transform education by personalizing student instruction with technology.
A classroom in San Francisco’s AltSchool.
AltSchool, however, made disappointing revenues and handed over control of its four schools to another start-up in 2019, according to Forbes.
In September 2015, Powell Jobs pledged $50 million via Emerson to fund a campaign called “XQ: The Super School Project.”
Powell Jobs with XQ CEO Russlynn Ali.
That venture aims to transform education by revamping how high schools approach curriculum. Powell Jobs is the chairwoman of XQ’s board of directors.
Powell Jobs has also served on the board of several other organizations, including Teach for America, Conservation International, and the New America Foundation.
In addition to her work with various causes, she’s also invested in sports.
The Washington Wizards.
In October 2017, she bought a 20% stake in Monumental Sports & Entertainment (MSE), the company that owns the NBA’s Washington Wizards, the NHL’s Washington Capitals, and Washington, D.C.’s Capital One Arena.
Powell Jobs and Emerson Collective partnered with writer Leon Wieseltier to form a new magazine called Idea.
Powell Jobs was interested in starting a new magazine.
She scrapped the venture when Wieseltier’s former colleagues at The New Republic came forward with allegations of sexual misconduct against him in October 2017.
In July 2017, Emerson Collective acquired a majority stake in The Atlantic, which was forced to lay off 17% its staff during the pandemic.
Powell Jobs at The Atlantic Festival in 2019.
Powell Jobs commended the magazine for its drive to “bring about equality for all people; to illuminate and defend the American idea; to celebrate American culture and literature; and to cover our marvelous, and sometimes messy, democratic experiment.”
The Emerson Collective has waded into politics.
Immigration rights activists on November 12, 2019.
The Collective purchased television ads attacking former President Donald Trump’s decision to rescind DACA in 2017.
Powell Jobs has also put millions of dollars into political campaigns.
Powell Jobs supported Kamala Harris’ presidential campaign before the then-California senator withdrew.
In 2017, when jokingly asked about plans to run for the 2020 presidential election during a joint interview, Powell Jobs pointed to the then-California senator, now Vice President, Kamala Harris, and said, “I would vote for her.” She would later back Harris’ presidential campaign before she withdrew from the race in December 2019.
Powell Jobs has hosted several fundraisers for Harris, including some located at her house. And when Harris’ first years as vice president garnered major scrutiny, Powell Jobs reportedly urged other Democrats to defend her.
Powell Jobs and Harris’ friendship run deeper than just politics.
Laurene Powell Jobs and Kamala Harris are reportedly close friends.
In 2003, she donated $500 to Harris’ first run for district attorney, and, for over the past 20 years, the two have reportedly cultivated a close relationship, The New York Times reported. Powell Jobs was one of about 60 people to attend Harris’ wedding to Douglas Emhoff in 2014, and later invited Harris to her son Reed’s wedding, according to the Times.
The two have also reportedly gone on personal trips together and have been spotted at various restaurants together including Nobu Malibu and Quince, located in San Francisco.
A spokesperson for Powell Jobs declined to comment on the NYT report when contacted by B-17.
Powell Jobs also backed Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign in 2016.
Powell Jobs also backed former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for the presidency in 2016.
She donated $2 million to Clinton’s Super PAC through the Emerson Collective and hosted a $200,000-a-plate fundraiser that raised over $4 million, CNN reported.
She also supported Joe Biden’s presidential campaign.
Powell Jobs was also a big donor to Biden’s campaign.
She donated more than $600,000 to efforts to elect Biden.
However, following his disastrous June debate against former President Donald Trump, Powell Jobs reportedly expressed concern over whether Biden would be able to win the election. She, among others, reportedly offered guidance to Harris, who would eventually take Biden’s spot in the presidential race.
Powell Jobs is also active in her state’s politics.
Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt was also among those backing Newsom.
She was one of the Silicon Valley power players who showed support for California Gov. Gavin Newsom in March 2021 amid a Republican-led recall effort.
Powell Jobs is most passionate about education and immigration policy.
Jobs has met with former president Donald Trump.
She met with then-President Donald Trump to discuss the topics in March 2017.
Some of Powell Jobs’ friends have long speculated if she wanted to enter politics.
Laurene Powell Jobs is not intending to enter an administrative role in politics.
In a 2022 episode on “The David Rubenstein Show,” when asked about potentially taking a more active, administrative role, she said, “It’s not my intention, but I would not necessarily shy away from another opportunity.”
Powell Jobs also has considerable real estate.
Powell Jobs owns homes, none pictured here, in San Francisco.
In 2018, she bought a $16.5 million home in San Francisco that boasts six bedrooms, 6.5 bathrooms, and incredible views of the city.
Over the years, she’s owned three other homes in the Bay Area, including a 5,768-square-foot house she shared with her late husband. She puts on elaborate Halloween shows in front of the houses each year that attract as many as 3,000 people. In 2019, the event was called “Fog Town” and featured a jack-o’-lantern tower and professional lighting, actors, and special effects.
In 2024, Powell Jobs spent $70 million on a home in San Francisco in an off-market deal, making it the most expensive ever purchased in the city, The Wall Street Journal reported, citing unnamed people familiar with the deal.
She also recently added to her real estate portfolio in Malibu, snapping up an oceanfront estate there for $94 million in June 2024.
Malibu Beach.
It’s the fourth property she’s bought in Malibu in roughly 10 years, according to the Los Angeles Times.
When she and her family are looking to get away, they sail off on the yacht her late husband commissioned: the Venus.
The Venus moored in 2013 on the French Riviera.
The yacht cost at least $110 million to build and was commissioned by Jobs but completed after he died.
It’s been spotted in places like Göcek, Turkey; Milos, Greece; and Brijuni, Croatia.
Besides sailing, some of Powell Jobs’ other hobbies include art collecting and beekeeping.
Despite her luxurious lifestyle and widespread influence, Powell Jobs says her kids may not inherit much.
Laurene Powell Jobs on November 9, 2017, in New York City.
“I’m very aware of the fact that we’re all just passing through here,” Powell Jobs told The Washington Post in 2018. “I feel like I’m hitting my stride now … It is my goal to effectively deploy resources. If there’s nothing left when I die, that’s just fine.”
In an interview with The New York Times in 2020, she shared similar sentiments.
“I’m not interested in legacy wealth buildings, and my children know that,” Powell Jobs told The Times. “Steve wasn’t interested in that. If I live long enough, it ends with me.”
