Laurene Powell Jobs left Wall Street and built a multibillion-dollar empire

Laurene Powell Jobs took an unusual route from Wall Street to becoming a major philanthropist and investor in the United States. After graduating from the University of Pennsylvania in 1985, she worked for a year at Merrill Lynch and two years in Goldman Sachs’ fixed-income division.

She eventually left finance and moved to Florence, Italy, where she lived for eight months. She later returned to the United States and earned an MBA from Stanford Graduate School of Business in 1991. The move reflected her growing dissatisfaction with work that she felt did not contribute enough to the wider world.

Powell Jobs’ life changed after she married Apple co-founder Steve Jobs. The couple met at a lecture he gave at Stanford’s business school, married in 1991 and had three children, Reed, Erin and Eve. For a period, she stepped away from a conventional career to raise her family while pursuing business and social-impact interests.

She founded Terravera, a small organic-meal company that did not last, but her interest in education became more durable. In 1997, she and Carlos Watson co-founded College Track, a nonprofit that helps disadvantaged students finish high school, attend college and graduate.

After Steve Jobs died in 2011, Powell Jobs inherited a substantial fortune. She used it to build Emerson Collective, an organization active in education, immigration, climate, media and social change. Her path turned personal wealth into a broad platform for influence rather than simply preserving it.