Η Lorin Powell-Jobs is a woman who knows how to keep herself out of the limelight, choosing when she will be captured by the lens.
The golden heir of his estate Steve Jobs, once Apple's boss, is still a big name in investment circles.
It manages to see $ 21,7 billion in assets, according to Bloomberg, with Forbes estimating its fortune just below $ 19,1 billion.
The relatively unknown to the general public Lorin has not been left in the billions left to her by the great visionary of technology. She invests her money to have more for a great life and charities.
So to see what we do not know about the woman that Steve Jobs chose to spend his life…
Lorin before Steve
Born in 1963 in New Jersey, New York, Lorin lost her pilot father before she turned three in a plane crash. Her mother remarried later, rebuilding her life.
She studied political science and economics, doing postgraduate studies in business administration at Stanford University. With such parchments in hand, jealous positions awaited her Wall Street, to giants like Merrill Lynch and Goldman Sachs.
The life-changing acquaintance, however, took place in 1989 in Stanford, where she went for her master's degree.
The future Mrs. Jobs
According to Steve Jobs biographer Walter Isaacson, Lorin did not want to go to university that day to hear a talk. He was almost dragged by a friend to hear what the guest speaker, Jobs, had to say.
"I knew Steve Jobs was the speaker, but the person I had in mind was him. Bill GatesLorraine later told Isaacson, "I kept confusing them."
And he had a pretty good reason for that: "We're still in 1989," he continued, "I was not excited at all, but my girlfriend was, and so we went."
However, they arrived late and were not allowed to enter the conference room. The two girls drilled into the room and sat in the front row, in the reserve seats of the officials.
Her future husband ended up sitting next to her. "I looked to my right and she was a pretty girl there, so we started talking while I waited to be called," Steve recalled.
She joked about her privileged position saying she had won a lottery and the first prize was a dinner with Jobs. Steve gave his lecture and as soon as he finished, he immediately ran outside to catch it.
After looking for her for a while, he saw her in the parking lot. He approached her and told her about the lottery. They agreed to go out for dinner that Saturday, exchanging phone numbers.
He did leave, had a business dinner shortly afterwards, but something made him return to Lorraine. He suggested they go out for dinner that night. As it happened.
While his NeXT employees were waiting for the boss to show up for the business dinner, he flirted with the graduate student at a nearby restaurant. The appointment went very well, they sat for 4 whole hours.
They never divorced after that night. They married two years later, in March 1991, and had three children, Reed, Erin and Eve. 23-year-old Eve began her career as a model in late 2020.
Lorin is also the stepmother of Lisa Brennan-Jobs, of Steve's daughter from an older relationship.
Jobs's widow
When he passed away in 2011 after being stricken with cancer, Lorraine inherited his untold fortune. Among the shares were his packages in Apple Lossless Audio CODEC (ALAC), and Disney, which went so far as to make her a billionaire.
As the golden beneficiary of the Steven P. Jobs Trust, it acquired 7,3% of the then $ 11,1 billion Walt Disney Company, as well as 38,5 million shares of Apple Inc.
"Rich woman of technology" was then characterized. Her stake in Disney enthroned her as the giant's most important private shareholder.
For an unknown reason, she liquidated in 2017 a significant part of her shares in Disney, however, keeping a not inconsiderable 4%.
Forbes named her the 2014th strongest woman in the world in 29. Today, it ranks her as the 95th richest person on the planet, estimating her personal fortune at $ 19,1 billion.
Charities
Lorin spends large sums on charitable actions and is especially known in these circles for her generosity. She was impressed by what she told the New York Times in 2020, that her children would not inherit it.
He even said it even more clearly: "If I live long enough, all this will end with me".
He probably meant that by then he would have given it all to charity. "In a broader sense, we want to use our knowledge and our network and our relationships to try to do the best we can," he told the same newspaper in 2013.
Explaining her reasoning better, she said she wants to distribute the money to the former Apple CEO in "ways that will help individuals and communities in a sustainable way." I'm not interested in wealth buildings and my children know that. Steve was not interested in such either. "If I live long enough, it will all end with me."
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He also said that the accumulation of wealth is "dangerous for society", citing the example of families like the Rockefellers.
"It is not right for some individuals to accumulate huge fortunes equal to those of millions and millions of people together. "There is nothing fair here."
Lorin has also been involved in business. In 1992 she founded a health food company (Terravera), where she sent her trucks under her offices Silicon Valley to better feed the executives of the technology industry.
Despite the fact that Terravera was doing well commercially, she left her a little later to focus on her volunteer work, to teach non-profit disadvantaged children in Palo Alto.
In 1997 he founded College Track, a non-governmental organization that prepares working-class children for college through courses and mentoring. The NGO currently operates centers in four US states.
The culmination of her philanthropic work, however, came in 2004, when she founded Emerson Collective, "a social change organization," as she puts it, in which she trusted more than $ 1 billion (from the sale of Disney stock).
What is he doing; Sponsors scholarships and invests in actions related to immigration, social justice and education.
Emerson Collective is a private company and not a non-profit company, having funded several startups. When she does not trust millions in the organizations she controls, Lorin gives them out of her own pocket. As it did in 2019, donating $ 50 million to an educational technology initiative.
He is also a member of several boards, including the infamous Council on Foreign Relations.
With Michael Bloomberg and Ray Dalio has also co-founded the Climate Leadership Council.
What does he do
Were it not for the relentless philanthropic work, Lorin Powell Jobs might have been known as a passionate art collector. She has been captured by the lens in several exhibitions and artistic events. In 2016 he went to a gala with the current CEO of Apple, Tim Cook.
He is also a fan of sports. That's why he bought a 20% stake in the NBA Washington Wizards.
In July 2017, he also purchased the majority stake in The Atlantic magazine, which praised his efforts to "bring equality to all people, to enlighten and defend the American idea, to celebrate American culture and literature, and to cover the wonderful, and sometimes messy, democratic experiment. "
That would put her in the former president's mouth Donald Trump, who attacked her in the fall of 2020 for an article in The Atlantic against him: "Steve Jobs would not be happy that his wife was wasting the money he left her in a troubled left-wing magazine," he wrote on Twitter.
The Republican president's attack was not accidental, Lorin is politicized. And a great sponsor of the Democrats, alas. He has given millions of dollars to election campaigns.
More recently, he funded Kamala Harris' presidential campaign before she withdrew from the race in December 2019.
In 2016 he had openly supported Hillary Clinton, donating $ 2 million to her campaign and organizing actions that brought in another $ 4 million to her staff. But more recently, he gave another $ 600.000 to get Joe Biden to become president.
The moment of her life must have been undoubtedly when she met with Trump in March 2017 to discuss immigration policy and education issues. As it became known, they did not agree on anything!
How he lives
Lorin lives in a $ 16,5 million villa in San Francisco, with 6 bedrooms, 7 bathrooms and perhaps the best view of the city.
He has three more houses in San Francisco, among them the villa of 535 sq.m. where she once lived with her husband and children. Outside of this house she continues to set up her unparalleled Halloween shows every year, an institution now in San Francisco that gathers several thousand people.
In an unknown aspect of her life, she loves a lot and dedicates a good part of her free time to beekeeping.
When he wants to get away from it all, he rides to Venus, the $ 110 million yacht ordered by Steve Jobs himself, but completed after his death. Venus has also appeared in our neighborhood, passing through Mykonos and Milos.
But despite her wealth, luxurious lifestyle and prestige, Lorin pays close attention to her public appearances. "I am well aware that we are all passing through this world," he told the Washington Post in 2018. "I feel that now is my time, my goal is to use my resources effectively. "If there is nothing left when I die, that will be fine."
The last time we heard it was this year, in a graduation talk at the University of Pennsylvania, where he advised graduates to follow the advice of the late Steve Jobs: to look for a job in the industry they love.
"Let his words lead you as they have led me," she concluded in May.