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Laurene Powell Jobs · The David Rubenstein Show

0:02
Speaker 1: One of the most interesting and significant philanthropists today in
0:05
Speaker 1: the United States is Lorene pal Jobs, the widow of
0:08
Speaker 1: Apple founder Steve Jobs. She's using her considerable fortune today
0:12
Speaker 1: to remake the world of philanthropy in areas such as
0:14
Speaker 1: immigration reform, education access, climate change, and healthcare. I sat
0:20
Speaker 1: down with her in her offices in Washington see to
0:22
Speaker 1: see what unique approaches he's using to each of these
0:25
Speaker 1: philanthropic endeavors. So, in recent years, you become one of
0:28
Speaker 1: the largest philanthropists in the United States, but you've done
0:31
Speaker 1: largely this by anonymity that's not well known what you're
0:34
Speaker 1: supporting generally, and you try to stay in the background.
0:37
Speaker 1: I think, so, why do you try to do your
0:39
Speaker 1: philanthropy this way? Often what happens, David, as you know
0:42
Speaker 1: with philanthropy is that there's a lot of um power
0:48
Speaker 1: that accrues to the giver and not as much to
0:52
Speaker 1: the organizations and the leaders that are doing the work
0:55
Speaker 1: on the ground. And so I wanted to make sure
0:57
Speaker 1: that that we were not the story that we were
1:00
Speaker 1: supporting people who were the story, that the leaders and
1:04
Speaker 1: the incredible workers who were doing day to day work
1:08
Speaker 1: to improve the lives of other humans were actually in
1:11
Speaker 1: the front and we were in the back. And I
1:14
Speaker 1: didn't ever want there to be the emphasis on me
1:19
Speaker 1: as a donor, or on Emerson Collective as a donor
1:23
Speaker 1: as much as the work that's being done on the ground.
1:27
Speaker 1: So we started off as as almost entirely anonymous donors
1:33
Speaker 1: and givers. Over time, at the behest of the organization
1:39
Speaker 1: or the leader, sometimes we will be in the front.
1:42
Speaker 1: Of course, if you're supporting nonprofit journalism, that has that
1:46
Speaker 1: has to be publicly acknowledged. So there there are plenty
1:50
Speaker 1: of times where we are where we are happy to
1:53
Speaker 1: acknowledge that we've made um a gift or a donation
1:58
Speaker 1: or what cour it over a long period of time.
2:02
Speaker 1: But that's not how we want to lead. So you
2:06
Speaker 1: do your philanthropy largely through Emerson Collective LLC. That's right.
2:12
Speaker 1: Why do you use an LLC rather than a foundation
2:15
Speaker 1: or nonprofit foundation, which is what people typically do. Yeah,
2:18
Speaker 1: it's true. From the beginning, I always felt that I
2:22
Speaker 1: didn't want to be encumbered by by a foundational constraint.
2:29
Speaker 1: My intent was always to deploy capital at as smartly
2:35
Speaker 1: and usefully as I possibly could, so define the highest
2:39
Speaker 1: and best use of the next dollar and and so
2:44
Speaker 1: I thought I could always hold off and form a
2:47
Speaker 1: foundation if if it turned out we were only going
2:49
Speaker 1: to be philanthropists as a group. But I also wanted
2:53
Speaker 1: to use other methodologies for for positive social change, like
2:58
Speaker 1: investing in entrepreneurs, sending companies, and perhaps using advocacy and artists,
3:05
Speaker 1: and and supporting movements and practices, and perhaps um young
3:11
Speaker 1: emerging leaders who didn't have a C three yet. And
3:15
Speaker 1: so I had I kept that level of ultimate flexibility
3:20
Speaker 1: and nimbleness, and it served us really well. I think
3:24
Speaker 1: the other issue that's really important to note is I
3:27
Speaker 1: came into philanthropy and and and Emerson collective as a
3:33
Speaker 1: broader practice from the vantage point of not wanting to
3:39
Speaker 1: accumulate wealth and and so my intention is to deploy
3:46
Speaker 1: resources and assets as effectively as I can not and
3:51
Speaker 1: so I didn't need any kind of tax preference for
3:54
Speaker 1: the dollars. So a number of the areas that you
3:57
Speaker 1: focus your own philanthropy owner I think worth talking about
4:00
Speaker 1: for a moment while you're interested in them. One of them,
4:03
Speaker 1: for example, is immigration. What makes you so interested in
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Speaker 1: immigration reform? And why are you spending so much of
4:12
Speaker 1: your time on that issue. I'll back up for a second.
4:16
Speaker 1: The organization that that I founded and was running in
4:19
Speaker 1: the beginning is called College Track, and I started College
4:24
Speaker 1: Track in East Palo Alto, right next to Palo Alto, California,
4:28
Speaker 1: because I had visited high school class. I had been
4:33
Speaker 1: invited to speak to seniors who were first generation college
4:37
Speaker 1: bound seniors, and the entire class was from East Palo Alto,
4:42
Speaker 1: and despite the fact that they were intending to go
4:46
Speaker 1: to college, I found very quickly that none of them
4:51
Speaker 1: had taken the S A T S. Very few had
4:54
Speaker 1: ever been on a college campus. We were in the
4:56
Speaker 1: fall of their senior year, and they hadn't received any guidance.
5:02
Speaker 1: So rather than have one time visit, I promised to
5:08
Speaker 1: the class at the end of the hour that I
5:10
Speaker 1: would come back every Friday afternoon and I would be
5:14
Speaker 1: their college counselor. And that realization, that experience changed my life.
5:21
Speaker 1: So I started then with freshman in high school, and
5:25
Speaker 1: by their senior year, I discovered that many of them
5:30
Speaker 1: didn't have a source security number. And these were students
5:34
Speaker 1: who were were fully American. They were raised as American,
5:38
Speaker 1: but they were brought here as toddlers. And very young,
5:42
Speaker 1: and they didn't know that they were undocumented. This was
5:47
Speaker 1: in the early two thousand's, before people were talking about
5:52
Speaker 1: the Dream Act and before people were talking about undocumented students.
5:56
Speaker 1: So I immediately started learning about immigrated scan law and
6:01
Speaker 1: immigration standing so that I could serve the students in
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Speaker 1: their families properly. And we started advocating for the passage
6:09
Speaker 1: of the Dream Act because what I learned was that
6:12
Speaker 1: this was not an isolated, rare case. And so we
6:17
Speaker 1: built out at Emerson Collective a bit of UM, a
6:22
Speaker 1: much deeper understanding of the issue, but a bit of
6:24
Speaker 1: a muscle around um, how do we actually work with municipal, state,
6:33
Speaker 1: and federal government to try to clarify this, to try
6:38
Speaker 1: to bring some common sense solutions to this. Because every
6:42
Speaker 1: single one of us it is either a a direct
6:47
Speaker 1: or a descendant of an immigrant. And the whole nature
6:51
Speaker 1: of the American dream is to come here for economic
6:55
Speaker 1: and social mobility and to activate our own potential, and
6:59
Speaker 1: so for us to be blocking that for people right
7:03
Speaker 1: now in our lifetime seems like something we need to
7:06
Speaker 1: all devote our time and attention to. Another area that
7:10
Speaker 1: you're interested in is climate change and that's an area
7:13
Speaker 1: that many people are focused on. What do you do
7:16
Speaker 1: in climate change that tries to bring your particular expertise
7:20
Speaker 1: and interest to the subject. We have we have what's
7:26
Speaker 1: invested in what's called the Elemental Accelerator, which is an
7:30
Speaker 1: accelerator for for young companies who are typically between their
7:36
Speaker 1: seed and A rounds, sometimes between their A and B rounds,
7:40
Speaker 1: who need who need the type of capacity building and
7:44
Speaker 1: organizational support that will allow them to dig in, have
7:50
Speaker 1: further proof of concept and raise further capital. We've had
7:54
Speaker 1: over a hundred and seventy companies go through the accelerator
7:57
Speaker 1: and they've attracted more than seven billion dollars on follow
8:00
Speaker 1: on investment. In addition to that, we have our own
8:04
Speaker 1: funding practice around companies that are leaning into the new
8:11
Speaker 1: green economy and the transition economy. But then we also
8:16
Speaker 1: have philanthropic practice that focuses on environmental justice and local
8:23
Speaker 1: communities who need to have perhaps a bridge between the
8:28
Speaker 1: state or federal policies that don't often reach local communities
8:33
Speaker 1: and who are the ones most impacted by the the
8:39
Speaker 1: toxicity of their communities air, water, and soil, and also
8:46
Speaker 1: are having deleterious health effects as a result of it.
8:52
Speaker 1: So we have we have a full kind of holistic
8:56
Speaker 1: focus around what does the change in climate mean for
9:01
Speaker 1: individuals everywhere. Let's talk about your youth, your teenage years,
9:05
Speaker 1: and where you spent them. You grew up in upstate
9:09
Speaker 1: New Jersey, New Jersey. My father died in a plane
9:13
Speaker 1: crash when I was three. He was he was He
9:17
Speaker 1: was a military pilot and um he was. This was
9:20
Speaker 1: during inactive duty. He was training other pilots and he
9:27
Speaker 1: died during during this training session. And my mother was
9:33
Speaker 1: twenty nine years old at the time with four children
9:37
Speaker 1: under the age of six, and she had been a
9:42
Speaker 1: history high school teacher before she had children. And what
9:47
Speaker 1: she ended up doing within about six months was starting
9:51
Speaker 1: a nursery school. It was it was a really smart
9:57
Speaker 1: pivot for her. She had some family and friends apporting her,
10:01
Speaker 1: but she needed to also take care of her children
10:04
Speaker 1: and support us as a family. So you went to
10:08
Speaker 1: college at University of Pennsylvania at Wharton. Why don't you pick?
10:10
Speaker 1: Wharton's a great school. But were you interested in business
10:13
Speaker 1: at that time? Well, I started at University of Pennsylvania
10:16
Speaker 1: as pre med and I had in my mind that
10:21
Speaker 1: I was going to be a doctor. And so I,
10:24
Speaker 1: in addition to work study and and doing my school
10:30
Speaker 1: work and doing waitressing on the side for pocket money,
10:33
Speaker 1: I also volunteered at the Hospital of the University of
10:36
Speaker 1: Pennsylvania at HUB and the doctors there were really generous
10:41
Speaker 1: with me and allowed me to scrub in on UH surgeries,
10:45
Speaker 1: and and I was in labor and delivery, and I
10:48
Speaker 1: had all sorts of jobs. And what I noticed, however,
10:52
Speaker 1: was the degree of commitment that is required and how
10:56
Speaker 1: and the narrowing that must happen um to be great
11:00
Speaker 1: at that discipline. And so I I questioned whether that
11:04
Speaker 1: was the right field for me to pursue. At the
11:07
Speaker 1: same time, in my work study job, I was working
11:11
Speaker 1: for penn student agencies and a few months in I
11:14
Speaker 1: had an idea for an agency. So I proposed it
11:19
Speaker 1: to the man who was running in and he was
11:22
Speaker 1: a warton grad student, and he told me to go
11:25
Speaker 1: write a business planning. So it's a good idea, but
11:26
Speaker 1: you need to write a business plan. So I wrote
11:28
Speaker 1: up a business plan for what we called Parents Services Agency,
11:32
Speaker 1: which was to market to parents the ability to send
11:37
Speaker 1: birthday cakes and care packages to students while they were
11:41
Speaker 1: going through mid terms of finals and obviously for all
11:43
Speaker 1: their birthdays and and the business ended up flourishing and
11:47
Speaker 1: we added more and more services. Uh. What I didn't
11:51
Speaker 1: count on was, of course we were working around the
11:53
Speaker 1: clock during mid terms and finals on our business. But
11:56
Speaker 1: it gave me that bug I didn't know about about this, uh,
12:03
Speaker 1: the field of entrepreneurism. And so I became an entrepreneur
12:07
Speaker 1: when I was at Penn and I loved it, and
12:10
Speaker 1: so so perhaps sophomore year I decided to I stayed
12:15
Speaker 1: at the College of Arts and Sciences, but then I
12:17
Speaker 1: added in a degree at Warten. So so I ended
12:20
Speaker 1: up getting both degrees. And so you got your degrees,
12:22
Speaker 1: and then what did you do after you graduated? I
12:25
Speaker 1: had to answer the need to pay off significant student loans.
12:31
Speaker 1: So I ended up going to Maryland Asset Management for
12:36
Speaker 1: about six months. I loved the work. But within a
12:40
Speaker 1: few months Maryland Asset Management had moved from New York
12:44
Speaker 1: City to Plainsborough, Print right near Princeton, New Jersey, which
12:49
Speaker 1: made everyone accept me very happy. And I was doing
12:53
Speaker 1: a reverse commute to Princeton, and I decided that I
12:57
Speaker 1: needed to find a job in New York City, and um,
13:01
Speaker 1: I knew someone at Goldman tax who who immediately said
13:05
Speaker 1: I should come to join them. So I interviewed and
13:10
Speaker 1: I started working pretty swiftly on the fixed income trading floor.
13:14
Speaker 1: You decided at some point to go to business school
13:17
Speaker 1: and why did you decide to go across the country
13:19
Speaker 1: to Stanford? A great business school. But a lot of
13:22
Speaker 1: people in East Coast often stay in East Coast, So
13:25
Speaker 1: what prompted you to go to Stanford? I wanted to
13:27
Speaker 1: go and study further, and so I did. And I
13:31
Speaker 1: went to Stanford because that was the place where exciting
13:36
Speaker 1: new things were happening, and that was what I understood. Uh,
13:41
Speaker 1: it was in a golden age of entrepreneurship. I say,
13:45
Speaker 1: all right, so you went to Stanford, and um, you
13:47
Speaker 1: met Steve Jobs then I did. And how did you
13:51
Speaker 1: meet him? It was my first week of school, first year,
13:57
Speaker 1: and he came and spoke to the the Business School
14:01
Speaker 1: during a speaker series called View from the Top, where
14:04
Speaker 1: there are several leaders that come throughout the year, and
14:08
Speaker 1: and Steve spoke to the Business School and he was
14:12
Speaker 1: electrifying and compelling and funny and delightful. And afterwards he
14:18
Speaker 1: asked me out to dinner and we went to dinner
14:21
Speaker 1: and we were together ever since. So at the time
14:26
Speaker 1: he was not at Apple, but he rejoined Apple, he
14:29
Speaker 1: was at Next Next. So when he rejoined Apple, did
14:33
Speaker 1: you tell him it was a good idea to rejoin
14:35
Speaker 1: the company had been at before, because usually when you
14:37
Speaker 1: go back to your previous place, employment doesn't always work out.
14:40
Speaker 1: We had a very long talk about it because it
14:44
Speaker 1: was the first time that in probably is certainly in
14:49
Speaker 1: our married life, that we had a little bit of
14:52
Speaker 1: a reprieve, and he was he was a little torn
14:57
Speaker 1: about going back into a company, of course that he
15:02
Speaker 1: was deeply devoted to and loved, but also he knew
15:07
Speaker 1: that they were not in good shape, and he knew
15:11
Speaker 1: deeply what it was going to take in order to
15:14
Speaker 1: turn things around, and that meant a lot of time
15:17
Speaker 1: away from family. So the company became after Steve went back,
15:21
Speaker 1: the most valuable company in the world. And Steve helped
15:25
Speaker 1: to invent this little product that says, the greatest consumer product,
15:28
Speaker 1: I guess of all time, the iPhone and most valuable probably,
15:32
Speaker 1: So when he did, he had come home one day
15:35
Speaker 1: and say, guess what I got this iPhone? It's going
15:37
Speaker 1: to be the greatest thing of all time? Or or
15:39
Speaker 1: did he didn't keep it? He kept it from you?
15:42
Speaker 1: What do you think? Uh, well, I'll tell you he
15:45
Speaker 1: didn't keep it from me. He didn't ever predict that
15:49
Speaker 1: anything that Apple creative was going to be the biggest
15:53
Speaker 1: thing of all time. In fact, he was quite accustomed
15:57
Speaker 1: to Apple being the the David to the rest of
16:03
Speaker 1: the industries Goliath. And they they have a beautiful or
16:07
Speaker 1: had a beautiful ethos and culture of of of being
16:13
Speaker 1: rebels and thinking about things differently and and differentially. So
16:19
Speaker 1: I did have the great fortune of of seeing some
16:23
Speaker 1: of the products. He didn't really bring them home, but
16:26
Speaker 1: I could go visit them, um, under the cloak of
16:29
Speaker 1: darkness in some of the design studios every now and then, Yes,
16:33
Speaker 1: but we would. We we talked about business and the
16:37
Speaker 1: business of Apple most every night, and it was that
16:41
Speaker 1: was a great joy for me. So when Steve became ill,
16:45
Speaker 1: eventually he decided to step back a bit shortly before
16:48
Speaker 1: he passed away. Um, but did you talk very much
16:51
Speaker 1: about him in those days about philanthropy, because he had
16:54
Speaker 1: not been that actively involved in philanthropy compared to what
16:57
Speaker 1: you have done. He thought about his work in the
17:00
Speaker 1: way that artists often think about their work, and so
17:05
Speaker 1: in his body of work, he felt that he was
17:10
Speaker 1: giving some service to humanity. Steve greatly esteemed what Andrew
17:18
Speaker 1: Carnegie did. He thought the creation of the libraries across
17:24
Speaker 1: the United States was the greatest active philanthropy because it
17:31
Speaker 1: allowed people to use their own determination and resolve and
17:37
Speaker 1: motivation too to further educate themselves. So having resources and
17:45
Speaker 1: and information and knowledge available and accessible to people what
17:52
Speaker 1: was for him the most important thing. He himself was
17:56
Speaker 1: an autodidact. He was immensely curious. I am also immensely curious.
18:02
Speaker 1: I think humans are immensely curious creatures, and so giving
18:08
Speaker 1: everyone the ability two improve their their area of interest,
18:15
Speaker 1: to improve their situation in an accessible, equal way, was
18:22
Speaker 1: what he thought we should be doing. You announced recently,
18:25
Speaker 1: I believe is that you're going to do something called
18:27
Speaker 1: those Steve Jobs Archive. And what is that designed to do.
18:31
Speaker 1: It's um, it's under construction in a certain way, it
18:37
Speaker 1: is evolving. I will say. We are trying to honor
18:44
Speaker 1: and elevate individuals through the inspiration of Steve in his life,
18:51
Speaker 1: and so we are we are collecting stories, remembrances, uh,
19:01
Speaker 1: data archival material, so original archival material in a thoughtful way.
19:08
Speaker 1: We have archivists who are doing that, but I think
19:12
Speaker 1: much more importantly, we are trying to find the best
19:18
Speaker 1: way to communicate to others his ethos and his sense
19:24
Speaker 1: of enormous human possibility, so that people can encounter the
19:30
Speaker 1: archive and feel inspired to do something even greater in
19:34
Speaker 1: their own lives, or to stretch what they think is
19:38
Speaker 1: a boundary or or something that they didn't contemplate for themselves.
19:43
Speaker 1: So so we we are still in the collection and
19:47
Speaker 1: development mode. We're building out programs. I think you'll see
19:52
Speaker 1: in the future. You'll see some scholarships and fellowships, you
19:57
Speaker 1: may see some publications, but it's it's much more about
20:03
Speaker 1: forward looking and inspiring people to think about how they
20:08
Speaker 1: can be part of positive movement. When you do philanthropy
20:13
Speaker 1: or when you do business through Emerson, you have metrics.
20:16
Speaker 1: In the business world, when you make an investment, you
20:18
Speaker 1: typically are looking for profitability or some kind of internal
20:21
Speaker 1: ready return. In philanthropy, there's not an easily agreed upon
20:26
Speaker 1: metric that you meant to measure success. So how do
20:28
Speaker 1: you measure success in your philanthropic undertaking? So how do
20:32
Speaker 1: you measure success in your investment entertaining? Oh, well, there
20:36
Speaker 1: are a lot of ways to measure success in philanthropy.
20:39
Speaker 1: I actually disagree with you. Um, there are plenty of metrics.
20:43
Speaker 1: It depends on what the goal is. Uh So, for example,
20:47
Speaker 1: if you have an education organization, you can measure student learning,
20:52
Speaker 1: you can measure students, serves, you can see if there's
20:56
Speaker 1: economic and social mobility over the course of a decade.
21:00
Speaker 1: So there are a lot of quantifiable measurements and we
21:04
Speaker 1: and we look at all of them. There's a lot
21:06
Speaker 1: of data to collect. There's also qualitative data where we
21:10
Speaker 1: can we can and do talk to people directly and
21:15
Speaker 1: we are in communities and we ask people about how
21:19
Speaker 1: how they're feeling about their lives and their opportunities and
21:24
Speaker 1: the possibilities, and so we we collect both qualitative and
21:29
Speaker 1: quantitative metrics. You collect this data, do you ever say, well,
21:33
Speaker 1: it's not really working and we should try something else,
21:35
Speaker 1: or you typically continue to support the projects you initially
21:38
Speaker 1: start with. Well, it's a good question. Sometimes the arc
21:41
Speaker 1: of change happens slower than one would like, and so
21:45
Speaker 1: there are there are indicators that could be positive, indicators
21:50
Speaker 1: that don't quite reach the goal, and so we we
21:54
Speaker 1: sometimes double down and sometimes we stick within. Other times
21:58
Speaker 1: we often make exit grants. And in the same way
22:01
Speaker 1: you exit investments, we exit investments and grants. So, when
22:06
Speaker 1: you're a well known philanthropist as you are, how do
22:09
Speaker 1: you avoid having people come up to you at every
22:11
Speaker 1: cocktail party or every event and say, I have a
22:14
Speaker 1: great idea for you, and you must have a process
22:17
Speaker 1: for filtering these things. But how do you avoid all that?
22:20
Speaker 1: I don't avoid. Well, I wited by not going out
22:22
Speaker 1: to cocktail parties, but otherwise I don't avoid it because
22:26
Speaker 1: I know great ideas come from everywhere, and I read
22:30
Speaker 1: all my own email, even though there's there can be
22:34
Speaker 1: several hundred a day, and and I'm always sending ideas
22:38
Speaker 1: on two different team members or responding we say no
22:42
Speaker 1: an awful lot. But every now and then we find
22:46
Speaker 1: someone who's doing something remarkable, and I never want to
22:51
Speaker 1: correct for that. I will. I will happily go through
22:55
Speaker 1: hours and hours of of of people pitching me on
23:00
Speaker 1: ideas for that one gem. So, um, you were close
23:05
Speaker 1: to President Obama. I think you knew him really well. Um,
23:08
Speaker 1: suppose President Obama had said or President Biden said, I'd
23:11
Speaker 1: like to appoint you to a senior cabinet position. Come
23:14
Speaker 1: in the government, or somebody said to you you should
23:16
Speaker 1: run for governor or center. Any interest in doing anythings
23:20
Speaker 1: like that in the government. I do live a life
23:23
Speaker 1: of service now, and I feel like I am getting
23:28
Speaker 1: good at it, better and better each day, learning a ton.
23:33
Speaker 1: I love what I do. To stop doing what I'm
23:37
Speaker 1: doing for a different way the realm of service would
23:42
Speaker 1: would require a great deal of deliberation. It's not my intention,
23:46
Speaker 1: but I would not necessarily shy away from another opportunity
23:52
Speaker 1: if I thought this was the highest and best use
23:55
Speaker 1: of my time. I think what I'm doing right now
23:58
Speaker 1: is the highest and best use of my time, and
24:00
Speaker 1: it took me a while to get here, so I'm
24:03
Speaker 1: very happily doing it. Thanks for listening to hear more
24:07
Speaker 1: of my interviews. You can subscribe and download my podcast
24:10
Speaker 1: on Spotify, Apple, or wherever you listen.