Laurene Powell Jobs Biography

Laurene Powell Jobs (born November 6, 1963) is an American business executive and the founder of Emerson Collective, which advocates for policies concerning education and immigration reform, social justice, and environmental conservation. She is also co-founder and President of the Board of College Track, which prepares disadvantaged high school students for college. Powell Jobs resides in Palo Alto, California with her three children. She is the widow of Steve Jobs, co-founder and former CEO of Apple Inc. She controls the Steven P. Jobs Trust, now known as the Laurene Powell Jobs Trust, which owns around 130 to 140 million shares of stock or between 7 and 8 percent stake as the largest shareholder in The Walt Disney Company.

Early life and career

Powell Jobs grew up in West Milford, New Jersey. She earned a B.A. from the University of Pennsylvania and a B.S. in Economics from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania in 1985. She received her M.B.A. from the Stanford Graduate School of Business in 1991.

She married Steve Jobs, the co-founder and former-CEO of Apple, Inc., on March 18, 1991, in a ceremony at the Ahwahnee Hotel in Yosemite National Park. Presiding over the wedding was Kobun Chino Otogawa, a Zen Buddhist monk. Their son, Reed, was born September 1991, followed by daughters Erin in 1995 and Eve in 1998.

Powell Jobs co-founded Terravera, a natural foods company that sold to retailers throughout Northern California. She also served on the board of directors of Achieva, which created online tools to help students study and be more effective at standardized testing. Before business school, Powell Jobs worked for Merrill Lynch Asset Management and spent three years at Goldman Sachs as a fixed-income trading strategist.

Steve Jobs' Death

On October 5, 2011, Powell Jobs' husband, Steve Jobs, succumbed to pancreatic cancer at the age of 56. Powell Jobs inherited the Steven P. Jobs Trust, which as of May 2013 had a 7.3% stake in The Walt Disney Company worth approximately $8.7 billion, and 5.5 million shares of Apple, Inc.

Philanthropy

In 1997, Powell Jobs and Carlos Watson co-founded College Track, a nonprofit organization in East Palo Alto to improve high school graduation, college enrollment, and college graduation rates for "underserved" students. Of College Track's high school graduates, many of whom are first-generation college students, approximately 90 percent attend four-year colleges and 70 percent finish college in six years, whereas the national average for first-generation college students is 24 percent. College Track has facilities in East Palo Alto, San Francisco, Oakland, Los Angeles, New Orleans, and Aurora, CO. "We have a wait list of five cities where we'd like to open up centers," Powell Jobs has said. "We want to keep our standards high, though, and are reluctant to grow through franchising or through dissemination of our curriculum and training."

Powell Jobs serves on the advisory board of Udacity, a higher education company from Stanford that provides affordable education. Powell Jobs also founded the Emerson Collective, an organization that supports social entrepreneurs and organizations working in education and immigration reform, social justice and conservation through partnerships, grants and investments. The Emerson Collective spearheads several social and political projects, among them The Dream is Now campaign and works closely with Conservation International and NewSchools Venture Fund.

As of 2013, Powell Jobs sits on the board of directors of College Track, NewSchools Venture Fund, The Foundation for Excellence in Education, Conservation International, and Stanford University. She also sits on the Chairman's advisory board of the Council on Foreign Relations.