Not one to treat philanthropy as a press release, Laurene Powell Jobs has given away so much that the 62-year-old’s net worth has dropped by nearly $5 billion since inheriting her husband’s fortune in 2011. Apple founder Steve Jobs left his wife and children an inheritance then valued at around $10 billion, primarily in shares of Apple and The Walt Disney Company. Through Emerson Collective, Powell Jobs has been using those billions to reshape the world around issues that matter to her.
And she has done it in a way that closely mirrors what Jobs reportedly wanted. Following the Apple co-founder’s last wish, Powell Jobs has already deployed roughly $5 billion of the original $10 billion, reported ABC. The innovator, who passed away in 2011, expressed before he died that his fortune should not outlive him, but instead be returned to society.
Since then, she has been channeling billions into social, environmental, and educational projects. In 2021, she launched the Waverley Street Foundation and committed to donate $3 billion over a decade to organizations addressing climate change. Through Emerson Collective, she has donated around $2 billion.
The Stanford graduate has also been offloading around 10% of her Disney shares every year since 2011 to fuel her charitable work. As she put it, “I inherited this fortune from someone who never cared about accumulating wealth. I have no interest in creating a hereditary dynasty, and my children know that. I have dedicated my life to distributing this money effectively, to sustainably empower communities.” It’s not just rhetoric. The mother of three has been clear she does not intend to pass billions down. “If I live long enough, it ends with me,” she said, and has acted accordingly.
Making money to donate money
Giving at this scale usually follows one of two paths, you either give until there is nothing left, or you give strategically while investing enough to keep creating new capital for future donations. In Powell Jobs’ case, the fortune arrived largely as Apple and Walt Disney Company stock, with the Disney stake stemming from the sale of Pixar.
Powell Jobs has also invested along the way. She purchased part of The Atlantic in 2017 and has backed other media outlets and nonprofit newsrooms, including ProPublica. She has held a minority stake in Monumental Sports, and in 2022 invested in the WNBA’s first-ever capital raise. The billionaire owner of the $140 million superyacht Venus recently exited Monumental Sports & Entertainment, selling her entire stake to private equity firm Arctos Partners and the Qatar Investment Authority, in a deal that reportedly netted her about $950 million.
She also owns far more real estate than the late Steve Jobs ever did, assembling major properties along the Pacific. Her portfolio includes a $70 million Spanish Renaissance Revival mansion in San Francisco’s Pacific Heights, which set a record as the most expensive home sale in the city’s history, plus the historic mansion at 2840 Broadway in the city’s Billionaire’s Row. In Malibu, she owns a $94 million oceanfront estate in Paradise Cove, a $44 million mansion, and two adjacent estates purchased for $16.5 million and $17.5 million. In 2018, she added a $16.5 million home in San Francisco’s Russian Hill. In addition to collecting homes, she’s building a Steve Jobs dynasty that ends with impact, not inheritance.
