Here is another superb article from for The New York Times in which he shares his conversation with Laurene Powell Jobs, an interview with the 35th-richest person in the world, who is funding efforts on immigration, education and independent media.
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Credit: Credit: Craig McDean for The New York Times
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Before I could interview Laurene Powell Jobs, she wanted to interview me.
It was an unusual request, but not a particularly surprising one coming from Ms. Powell Jobs. Nearly a decade after the death of her husband, the Apple co-founder Steve Jobs, she remains an intensely private person.
When Mr. Jobs was alive, Ms. Powell Jobs stayed out of the public eye. She ran a natural food company, worked on education and immigration reform, and cared for their family. And while Ms. Powell Jobs has in recent years become increasingly ambitious with her business and philanthropy, she keeps a low profile, granting relatively few interviews and eschewing the spotlight. If she was going to agree to a sit-down, she wanted some sense of who would be asking the questions.
So on a cold morning late last year, we settled onto plush couches in the dimly lit drawing room of the Greenwich Hotel in New York, warmed by a raging fireplace. As she sipped green juice, we spoke about climate change, a shared interest in Buddhism and more. That conversation wasn’t on the record. But two months later we settled onto the same couches, by the same fire, and this time my recorder was on.
It soon became clear why Ms. Powell Jobs is careful with her public appearances. In an era of tweets, she speaks in long, discursive paragraphs that weave together personal narrative, politics and her views on social change. She invokes Dante, Ralph Waldo Emerson and Ross Perot without irony. Her ideas are nuanced, and she doesn’t pretend to have easy solutions to complex problems.
Ms. Powell Jobs also believes that, at least in some ways, her husband was misunderstood. The popular interpretation of one of his most popular quotes — “We’re here to put a dent in the universe” — is, she contends, all wrong.
They met in 1989 when Mr. Jobs gave a lecture at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, where Ms. Powell Jobs was studying after a stint at Goldman Sachs. They married two years later in Yosemite National Park, hiking in the snow after the ceremony. Mr. Jobs was running NeXT at the time, having resigned from Apple years earlier. Over the next two decades, he returned to Apple, introducing the iMac, iPod, iPhone and iPad.
As Mr. Jobs was busy upending the personal technology industry, Ms. Powell Jobs founded College Track, which helps underprivileged youths get into college, and Emerson Collective, an umbrella organization for her philanthropic and business interests.
After Mr. Jobs died from cancer, in 2011, she spent several years out of public view. But more recently, Ms. Powell Jobs — the 35th-richest person in the world, worth some $27.5 billion — has begun to exert her influence.
She acquired Pop-Up Magazine and major stakes in the Atlantic magazine and in Monumental Sports, which owns the Washington Wizards and Mystics basketball teams and the Washington Capitals hockey team. She is working with the former education secretary Arne Duncan to reduce gun violence in Chicago. At the Sundance Film Festival this year, a new documentary studio backed by Ms. Powell Jobs made a splash.
It’s a diverse set of concerns, and reflects her belief that issues like poverty, education, personal health and environmental justice are all interconnected.
“When you pull one thread, you get the whole tapestry,” she said. “When you’re working in the social sector, you actually cannot make any lasting forward movement if you’re only focused on one thing.”
Ms. Powell Jobs, 56, is acting with a sense of urgency these days. She believes that President Trump’s statements and policies have unleashed dark forces that are tearing apart the very fabric of society.
“There’s been a significant breakdown in Americans’ ability to speak to one another and to hear one another,” she said. “That’s become much worse in the last three years, where there’s been full license given to the otherization of our neighbor.”
Her conviction has brought Ms. Powell Jobs off the sidelines and into some of the most contentious political fights of the day. A longtime supporter of people brought into the United States as children, known as Dreamers, she bought television ads opposing Mr. Trump’s decision to end a program that gave the group temporary protection from deportation. Last year, she said Mr. Trump’s attacks on the media were “right out of a dictator’s playbook,” and went on to give a speech defending independent journalism.
As someone attuned to society’s structural inequalities, Ms. Powell Jobs grasps the immensity of her privilege. She is a Silicon Valley billionaire, pushing back against the wealthy occupant of the White House. The very fact that such fortunes exist while others struggle to get by strikes her as unjust.
“It’s not right for individuals to accumulate a massive amount of wealth that’s equivalent to millions and millions of other people combined,” she said. “There’s nothing fair about that.”
And yet Ms. Powell Jobs is hardly apologetic. “I inherited my wealth from my husband, who didn’t care about the accumulation of wealth,” she said. “I am doing this in honor of his work, and I’ve dedicated my life to doing the very best I can to distribute it effectively, in ways that lift up individuals and communities in a sustainable way.
“I’m not interested in legacy wealth buildings, and my children know that,” she added. “Steve wasn’t interested in that. If I live long enough, it ends with me.”
This interview was condensed and edited for clarity.
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Here is a direct link to the complete interview.
David Gelles writes the Corner Office column and other features for The New York Times’s Sunday Business section, To learn more about him and his work, please click here.