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It’s been a decade since Apple co-founder Steve Jobs passed away leaving his wife Laurene Powell Jobs with a fortune valued at $16.6 billion, making her one of the richest women in the world. Now, the 57-year-old billionaire is using that wealth to expand her own businesses and philanthropies.
She doesn’t appear content with people minimizing her story, she’s more than the widow of Steve Jobs. Laurene Powell Jobs is making moves and using her fortune to make her own dent in the universe.
“To do what you wanna do, to leave a mark - in a way that you think is important and lasting - that's a life well-lived.” Laurene Powell Jobs
Where is Powel Jobs leaving her mark? The window has been using the fortune to fund various philanthropic efforts, including founding an organization aimed at creating social change. But she also has other expensive hobbies such as art collecting and has donated significantly to political campaigns.
When the philanthropist isn’t busy trying to improve the world, you can find her gardening on her sprawling San Francisco home, or vacationing on a superyacht off the coast of Croatia.
Starting An Organization
Powell Jobs founded Emerson Collective in 2004, a social change organization named after one of her favorite writers, Ralph Waldo Emerson. The Emerson Collective is a private company rather than a traditional non-profit and makes grants and investments that focus on immigration, social justice, and education. It has funded several start-ups.
The Washington Post described it as a “kind of Justice League of practical progressives”.
Now she is gearing up to invest $3.5 billion into climate-focused initiatives in the next 10 years.
Powell Jobs has also served on the board of several other organizations including Teach for America, Conservation International, and the New America Foundation.
Buying Property And Taking Vacations
According to Dirt, in 2015 Powell Jobs paid $44 million for a Paradise Cove mansion in Malibu. In 2017 she picked up the $16.5 million house next door. Now it appears earlier this year she paid an extra $17.5 million for a small oceanfront house that sits next to her estate.
So far, she’s spent $80 million on land in Malibu alone. The two shared a modest Palo Alto bungalow with a large garden before Steve Jobs died.
One of her most unmodest possessions might be her $110 million megayacht called Venus. Powell Jobs frequently vacations, and is often cruising off the coast of Cannes in the Mediterranean,
Jobs constructed a sleek ship of lightweight aluminum and special glass. He employed the chief engineer of his Apple stores to design the special glass so the ship could have ten-foot-high windows across the hull.
The Yacht was one of Jobs' last projects before he died. He explained to his biographer Walter Isaacson: “I know that it's possible I will die and leave Laurene with a half-built boat. But I have to keep going on it. If I don't, it's an admission that I'm about to die.”
Spending It Like A Billionaire
Besides her work with various causes, Powell Jobs has a reputation as a major art collector and enthusiast. Her art collection was large enough to qualify her as one of the Top 200 Collectors in 2018, according to Artnews magazine.
She’s also a big sports fan. She bought a 20% stake in the company that owns the NBA’s Washington Wizards, the NHL’s Washington Capitals, and Washington’s Capital One Arena in October 2018. That gave Powell Jobs the second-largest stake in the 19-person Monumental group, behind CEO and Chairman Ted Leonsis.
Through her organization Emerson Collective, she acquired a majority stake in The Atlantic, a new outlet founded in 1857. The Washington Post reports that the organization will move to full ownership of the Atlantic over the next few years.
Powell Jobs also uses her fortune to donate to dozens of political campaigns. She has supported candidates like Amy Klobuchar, Pete Buttigieg, Kamala Harris, Cory Booker, and Michael Bennet. After Joe Biden became the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, she went on to donate over $600,000 to his campaign.
One politician to who she hasn’t donated is Donald Trump, who chimed in about how she was using her fortune, he tweeted, “Steve Jobs would not be happy that his wife is wasting money he left her on a flailing radical left magazine.”
Sources: Business Insider, Dirt, SCMP
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