High-profile friendships are always somewhat of a novelty—especially when they intersect business and politics. Take the cozy relationship between Laurene Powell Jobs and Vice President Kamala Harris, for example.
Powell Jobs, the widow of Apple co-founder and former CEO Steve Jobs, has been friends with the Democratic presidential nominee for years. In fact, these two powerful women are so close Harris has referred to Powell Jobs as part of her family.
In 2017, then-vice president Joe Biden swore in Harris as a U.S. senator, and right after the ceremony they posed for a photo in the Capitol with her family. Then she asked Biden to take a picture with her “extended family,” according to a report from The New York Times. Powell Jobs—one of the richest women in the world—was quick to jump in.
She inherited Jobs’ stakes in Disney and Apple upon his death, with her net worth amounting to $11.5 billion today, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
But Powell Jobs’ claim to fame isn’t just being the wife of the late and great Steve Jobs. She founded the Emerson Collective, a philanthropy and investment firm heavily focused on education, immigration reform, environmental issues, health, as well as media and journalism (the collective is a majority owner of The Atlantic and funded Axios).
Laurene Powell Jobs’ connection to Democratic politics
Beyond business investments, though, Powell Jobs and the Emerson Collective have also been heavily funding democratic politics for the past several years. Since 2020, Powell Jobs and the Emerson Collective have donated more than $3.4 million to democratic nominees and other funds, according to Federal Election Commission filings collected by Fortune.
Powell Jobs is among several wealthy women with connections to Silicon Valley making major donations to democratic candidates. Since 2020, philanthropist Melinda French Gates has made $2.09 million in donations, 23andMe CEO Anne Wojcicki has donated $1.84 million, and former Meta COO Sheryl Sandberg has donated $1.53 million.
Not only has Powell Jobs consistently donated to democrats, but she’s also taken a special interest in her friend Harris. In 2023, Powell Jobs made three donations to Harris’ campaign amounting to nearly $1 million.
“Laurene has a gift for friendship, especially old friends—she is tribally loyal,” David Bradley, who sold The Atlantic magazine to the Emerson Collective, told The New York Times. “Kamala Harris falls within that ring of friends.” Other Wall Street billionaires and big business leaders have also backed Harris and provided piles of funding.
Powell Jobs and Harris have been friends for two decades, and she’s also made other “quiet” donations amounting to millions of dollars to an organization backing Harris, three people briefed on the gifts told The New York Times. Powell Jobs also allegedly played a “key role” in helping usher Biden out of the race, making room for Harris to step up.
But their friendship goes back further than that. Powell Jobs, who is one year Harris’ senior, donated $500 to Harris’ first run for district attorney of San Francisco in 2003, and the two of them attended the March for Women’s Lives in Washington, D.C. with other female Bay Area leaders.
While Powell Jobs dodged NYT opinion writer Kara Swisher’s question in 2017 about running for the presidency herself in 2020, she confidently pointed to Harris, who was sitting in the crowd at a tech conference.
“I vote for her,” Powell Jobs said.
