Behind Kamala Harris’ rise: Silicon Valley’s wealthiest woman

San Francisco: After then-vice president Joe Biden swore in Kamala Harris as a United States senator in January 2017, they posed for a customary photo in the Capitol with her family. Then she asked her future boss for a favour: Would he indulge in one more photo?

“Come on, everybody,” Harris said, waving in a dozen others. “My extended family is here.”

The first member of Harris’ entourage to approach Biden just happened to be one of the richest people in the world: Laurene Powell Jobs.

Laurene Powell Jobs, founder and president of Emerson Collective, right, introduces US Vice President Kamala Harris at the “In Her Hands” event in Los Angeles, California, in 2022.Credit: Bloomberg

Powell Jobs, the philanthropist who controls a fortune worth more than $US11 billion, stood just behind Biden’s right shoulder, joining Harris’ best friend from kindergarten and others in her inner circle. As the photo was snapped and the group broke up, Biden grabbed a coveted 60 seconds with Powell Jobs – asking about her son and talking about his ambitions for cancer research.

Few figures have cultivated a more consequential friendship with Harris, now the Democratic nominee for president, than Powell Jobs, who for decades was married to one of America’s most famous entrepreneurs, Steve Jobs, co-founder of Apple.

Over the past 20 years, she has become one of Harris’ most essential confidants, providing counsel and money, and helping to expand Harris’ public profile. Now, in this year’s presidential race, the wealthiest woman in Silicon Valley has emerged as a powerful player behind the scenes. She has quietly contributed millions of dollars to an organisation backing Harris, according to three people briefed on the gifts.

She played a hidden but key role in helping usher Biden out of the race, which cleared the way for a Harris run.

US President Joe Biden posthumously presents the Presidential Medal of Freedom to Laurene Powell Jobs in honour of Steve Jobs, co-founder of Apple, in 2022.Credit: Bloomberg

And Powell Jobs, who is so close to the vice president that her staff refers to her simply as “LPJ”, is positioned to have extraordinary influence, or at least access, in a potential Harris administration.

“Laurene has a gift for friendship, especially old friends – she is tribally loyal,” said David Bradley, who sold The Atlantic magazine to Powell Jobs’ company, the Emerson Collective. “Kamala Harris falls within that ring of friends.”

Silicon Valley roots

Darren Walker, the president of the Ford Foundation, found himself at an intimate dinner in Washington last northern autumn along with Powell Jobs, Harris and Doug Emhoff, Harris’ husband.

The women, he recalled, seemed especially at ease. “It was the vice president’s residence,” he said, “but they were sitting on the sofa like longtime girlfriends.”

Over fish and African vegetables, Walker said, they chatted about art and recounted stories of their recent travels to Africa.

“There was no mention of any political leaders,” he said. “No one mentioned Trump. No one mentioned the president.”

Laurene Powell Jobs and her son Reed arrive to attend a state dinner in honour of French President Emmanuel Macron and Brigitte Macron hosted by US President Joe Biden and First Lady Jill Biden at the White House in 2022.Credit: Bloomberg

Politicians often use the word “friend” to describe patrons who can power their campaigns and careers. Neither Harris nor Powell Jobs, who both zealously guard their privacy, would comment for this story. But in interviews, three dozen people with insight into their bond described a genuine friendship built on a shared political philosophy, an interest in art and culture and their mutual trials as women in the public spotlight.

Harris, 59, and Powell Jobs, 60, rose to prominence together in San Francisco’s Bay Area: Powell Jobs donated $US500 to Harris’ first run for the city’s district attorney in 2003. The next year, they attended the March for Women’s Lives in Washington, DC, part of a “posse” of female leaders from the area, recalled Andrea Dew Steele, who organised the group.

“She was helpful early on in Kamala’s career,” Dew Steele recalled.

The women spent the next two decades travelling among the same Silicon Valley elite. They have attended each other’s family events: Powell Jobs was one of about 60 people to attend Harris’ wedding to Emhoff in 2014, and Powell Jobs invited Harris to the wedding of her son, Reed, in Hawaii this year, which Emhoff attended. They even shared the same celebrity dermatologist.

American businesswoman, Laurene Powell Jobs, speaks during the Clinton Global Initiative in New York on Tuesday.Credit: AP

Even as Harris’ career took her to Sacramento and Washington, they have gone on personal trips together, with Harris at times flying on Powell Jobs’ private plane. They have prioritised one-on-one meals when they’ve found themselves in the same city. They have been spotted together at Quince, a San Francisco hot spot, and were once seen chatting with Rupert Murdoch at the high-end restaurant Nobu Malibu.

Susie Tompkins Buell, a San Francisco philanthropist who is close to both women, recalled the look on Powell Jobs’ face as Harris spoke at her swearing-in as California attorney-general in 2011.

“I’ve watched them appreciate each other in a room full of a lot of people – Laurene looking so proudly at Kamala when she was speaking, and just seeing this great sense of appreciation and pride,” she said. She has texted with Powell Jobs in recent weeks about how to support Harris’ presidential bid. “I know she’s just beside herself with joy.”

‘I vote for her’

In 2017, Powell Jobs consented to a rare interview onstage at a tech conference hosted by journalist Kara Swisher, who would become a New York Times opinion writer. She brought Harris along and made the interview a twofer.

It was the beginning of the Trump administration, but Swisher was already looking ahead to the next election. When she jokingly asked Powell Jobs if she was planning to run for president in 2020, Powell Jobs quickly turned the question into an opportunity to promote Harris, then a newly elected senator from California.

“Well, one of us should,” Powell Jobs replied. She pointed at Harris and said, “I vote for her”.

Powell Jobs’ re-emergence into public and political life in the years since her husband died of cancer, in 2011, has been cautious and deliberate. She began making bigger political donations and lobbying Washington, pressing then-president Barack Obama on education at a closed-door Q&A with other tech billionaires during his 2012 reelection campaign, according to a person who was in the room.

Powell Jobs was, like her late husband, an enigma – but she had sweeping ambitions. Politicians began to seek her out. Michelle Obama invited her to sit in her box during her husband’s State of the Union address in 2012. Hillary Clinton cultivated her, and Powell Jobs hosted a 20-person, $US200,000-a-head event for Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign. She struck up a friendship with Kevin McCarthy, the former Republican speaker of the House.

And as Harris sought higher office, Powell Jobs hosted a series of fundraisers for her, including several at her house and one in 2014 with fellow Silicon Valley royalty like Marc Benioff, the founder of Salesforce; investor Ron Conway, her closest political confidant; and Sean Parker, the early Facebook executive. In 2016, she spent election night taking selfies with Harris at a party in Los Angeles, celebrating Harris’ election to the Senate.

As a senator, Harris often visited Emerson Collective’s offices in Washington to speak with Powell Jobs, her staff and the billionaire’s friends like Yo-Yo Ma and fashion designer Marc Ecko.

Still, the sprawl of Powell Jobs’ empire, vast even among ambitious Silicon Valley billionaires, sometimes gets in the way. Powell Jobs’ 2017 near-total purchase of The Atlantic has at times made her reluctant to jump more fully into politics. She has told other Democrats that as the de facto owner of a large media company — Powell Jobs has even tried her hand at journalism, interviewing Harris for an event hosted by The Atlantic — she should not be a fully fledged partisan actor, to the frustration of some on both her and Harris’ teams. She declined to significantly help Harris’ presidential bid in 2019.

The fateful debate

Powell Jobs has visited the Biden-Harris White House nine times, but she has not always loved the administration.

The first years of Harris’ tenure as vice president were especially difficult, as she drew criticism for her efforts on illegal immigration and reports of unhappiness among her staff. She frequently leant on Powell Jobs, confiding in her about the toll that the public scrutiny was taking, according to a person briefed on the relationship, and Powell Jobs pushed other Democrats to defend her more vigorously.

But Powell Jobs’ relationship with Biden has been trickier. She has been a major shareholder in Apple and Disney, and has bristled at some Biden policy positions that she considers anti-tech. She expressed frustration over what she considered hostile rhetoric from the president about rich people and Silicon Valley.

Then came the June debate.

After Biden’s disastrous performance against former president Donald Trump, Powell Jobs expressed to other major Democratic donors her deep concerns about Biden’s ability to win the election. One of her top aides, David Simas, a former Obama staff member who oversees her political research, circulated focus-group and polling data to other donors that painted a dire portrait. Several said Simas’ research was influential in encouraging them to mobilise against Biden.

As Biden insisted that he would not leave the race, Harris quietly tried to survey her options and navigate the sensitive politics of the moment. Among those she turned to for counsel was Powell Jobs.

Just weeks later, Powell Jobs was at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, sitting at times in Harris’ exclusive friends and family box and watching her companion formally accept the party’s nomination for president.

A Harris administration role?

Harris and Powell Jobs have talked for decades about the challenges of being women in the public eye – and now the billionaire could help elect the country’s first female president.

Powell Jobs was not particularly involved in Biden’s reelection campaign, but she has told friends recently that she was energised by Harris’ ascension. She has joined calls with Harris campaign officials in recent weeks and told them that she was eager to host an intimate, pricey event for her, similar to the one she threw for Clinton, although with time short and money flooding in, officials are sceptical that an event will come together.

Powell Jobs has spoken with other female leaders in technology and encouraged them to publicly support Harris. And her team has circulated to other megadonors a list of 17 recommended pro-Harris organisations to which they can donate, including the super political action committee (PAC) Future Forward, where one of her senior political aides is working. Powell Jobs prefers to make undisclosed contributions, and she has donated millions to Future Forward’s dark-money (undisclosed donor) vehicle, according to three people briefed on the donations.

Friends of Powell Jobs’ have long thought she might want to go into politics. Some have wondered whether, if Harris wins the election, Powell Jobs might want a formal role in the administration, such as secretary of education, one of her top issues. Others hope she will simply use her clout to try to influence Harris more informally, such as by pushing her to support tougher measures to fight climate change.

Either way, Marc Porter Magee, an education-reform advocate, predicted that Powell Jobs would emerge as an insider in a Harris administration.

“Laurene is one of a small number of philanthropists who has both made significant investments in educational innovation and is also actively engaged in Democratic politics,” he said. “If Harris wins, she and her staff could emerge as important players in an administration that has yet to define its K-12 agenda.”

Is the publicity-averse Powell Jobs even interested in a Washington career?

“I do live a life of service now, and I feel like I am getting good at it,” Powell Jobs told an interviewer in 2022. “It’s not my intention,” she said, “but I would not necessarily shy away from another opportunity.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.