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