Laurene Powell Jobs: Founder of Emerson Collective and Chair of The Atlantic

Laurene Powell Jobs: Founder of Emerson Collective and Chair of The Atlantic

Business Owner · Media & Entertainment

Palo Alto

Laurene Powell Jobs co-founded the natural foods company Terravera, then founded Emerson Collective, became lead investor and chair of The Atlantic and co-founded XQ Institute.

About Laurene Powell Jobs: Founder of Emerson Collective and Chair of The Atlantic

Laurene Powell Jobs (born November 6, 1963) is an American entrepreneur, business executive and philanthropist, the founder and president of Emerson Collective, lead investor and chair of The Atlantic, and co-founder and chair of XQ Institute. She sits on the boards of the Ford Foundation, the Council on Foreign Relations, Chicago CRED, College Track and Elemental Impact. She is the widow of Steve Jobs, co-founder and former chief executive of Apple, to whom she was married for twenty years. Powell Jobs was raised in West Milford, New Jersey, and earned a BA in political science from the University of Pennsylvania and a BS in economics from the Wharton School in 1985, and an MBA from Stanford Graduate School of Business in 1991. Before business school she worked at Merrill Lynch Asset Management and spent three years at Goldman Sachs as a fixed-income trading strategist. In the 1990s, after her MBA, she co-founded Terravera, a natural foods company that sold to retailers throughout Northern California. Sources: English Wikipedia (Laurene Powell Jobs, accessed September 2026).

Basic Information

Founder and president, Emerson Collective; chair, The Atlantic

Company Details

Emerson Collective / The Atlantic

Philanthropic Investing, Media, Education