Emerson Collective (Waverley Street Foundation)

As of 2024, the Waverley Street Foundation reported approximately $2.74 billion in assets, $336 million in expenses, and $290 million in revenue. ² In 2019, Inside Philanthropy named Powell Jobs its “Least Transparent Mega-Giver” of the year, citing the organization’s refusal to publicly disclose grant award amounts or financial statements from its LLC arm. ³

In 2021, Powell Jobs pledged $3.5 billion to fund climate and other environmentalist initiatives through the Waverley Street Foundation, which was to be expended by 2035. Lisa Jackson, Apple Inc.’s then-vice president of Environment, Policy, and Social Initiatives and former EPA administrator under former President Barack Obama, chairs the Waverley Street Foundation board as of 2026. Jared Blumenfeld, a former San Francisco environmental official and Natural Resources Defense Council attorney, was named the foundation’s president in August 2022. As of 2024, the foundation had awarded more than $500 million in grants since its founding and claims to have a full-time staff of 15 employees. ^{4 5 6}

Background

While most charitable non-profits are organized as 501(c)(3) tax-exempt nonprofit corporations, the Emerson Collective is a Limited Liability Corporation (LLC), a structure ordinarily used for for-profit businesses. ⁷ LLCs rarely attain tax-exempt status due to the complexity of complying with the relevant regulations. ⁸

One of the requirements for an LLC to be a non-profit is for the entity to be owned by another non-profit. ⁸ Hence, the Emerson Collective is owned by the Emerson Collective Foundation, a 501(c)(3) organization. While the Foundation must publicly disclose its financial statements, it is not required to reveal the inner workings of the Emerson Collective. ⁹

By operating as an LLC, the Collective can use its funds for a wider variety of purposes than traditional charities, including political advocacy. It also enjoys less rigorous reporting requirements,¹⁰ and does not publicly reveal its financial statements nor grant award amounts. ¹¹

In 2019, philanthropy website Inside Philanthropy named Laurene Powell Jobs its “Least Transparent Mega-Giver” of the year. ¹²

Activities

Laurene Powell Jobs began her philanthropic career in 1997 with College Track, a Palo Alto-based education non-profit. She started the Emerson Collective seven years later, but the organization grew dramatically after Powell Jobs inherited $14.1 billion from her late husband Steve Jobs, ¹³ expanding from 10 employees to over 180. ^{9 14}

Powell Jobs has expressed concern with the perceived lack of social and economic mobility in the US, and attributes these shortcomings to structural injustices and institutional stagnation. ¹⁵

As founder and president of the Collective, Powell Jobs modeled the organization after the Silicon Valley start-up culture Steve Jobs helped pioneer. She intended to build an organization which could fund ambitious ideas across any field which might benefit her broadly left-of-center goals. Innovation is encouraged and failure on bold ideas accepted; each of the Collective’s eight sectors are run like start-ups, and their operators are given latitude to pursue their goals with little oversight. ¹⁰

Combined with the LLC structure, Powell Jobs has steered the Collective across an unusually wide breadth of fields, including education, immigration, environmentalism, journalism, health care research, entrepreneurialism, gun control, voting rights, among others. Likewise, the Collective has funded an equally varied array of methods to pursue its goals, leading the Washington Post to describe the organization as “equal parts think tank, foundation, venture capital fund, media baron, arts patron and activist hive.” ⁹

Notable Previous Staff

Several notable individuals have previously worked for, or were affiliated with the Emerson Collective. These include Arne Duncan, who was the Education Secretary under then-President Barack Obama, and Russlynn Ali, then-President Obama’s Assistant Education Secretary for Civil Rights. Others including Andy Karsner, who was Assistant Energy Secretary for Renewable Energy under then-President George W. Bush, and Dan Tangherlini, who headed General Services under the Obama Administration, have also been affiliated with the organization. Jennifer Palmieri, the communications director for Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign previously worked for the Collective as well. ¹⁶

Activism

Venture Capital Investments

By taking advantage of its LLC structure, the Collective is willing to stake companies whose business goals align with its own philanthropic values. Since 2014, the Collective has funded more than 30 for-profit start-ups, including a floating data center company, and a supersonic aircraft company. It took an early stake in the social media platform, Pinterest, which launched a $12.8 billion IPO in 2019. ¹⁷

While the Collective does not take profits, Laurene Powell Jobs has drawn criticism for using her philanthropic organization as a de facto venture capital fund. ¹⁷

The Atlantic Acquisition

In 2017, the Collective paid over $100 million for a reported 70% stake¹⁸ in The Atlantic, the 162 year-old magazine and multi-platform publication. Beyond pricing and equity, the terms of the deal have not been publicly revealed,¹⁹ but Powell Jobs has expressed her support for journalistic independence as a crucial component of maintaining democracy. ²⁰

The Collective has funded numerous other left-of-center media outlets, including Mother Jones, Marshall Project, and ProPublica. ²¹

Mexico-US Border Wall Art

In October, the Collective financed an art installation spanning both sides of a Mexico-US border barrier to protest the immigration policies of the Trump administration. The piece, depicting the eyes of Mayra, a young illegal immigrant, was created by French street artist, JR. ²²

XQ: The Super School Project

XQ is the Collective’s initiative to fund 14 model school experiments across the country to change the institutional structure of secondary education. ²³²⁴

In 2017, the Collective put on the “XQ Super School Live Special” on ABC, CBS, Fox, and NBC which drew heavy criticism for its implied dismissal of past education reform efforts and the value of teachers. ²⁵²⁶

Biden Community Violence Intervention Collaborative

In June 2021, the Biden administration announced a program to combat rising gun violence and violent crime using a collaborative composed of government and nonprofit organizations funding community violence intervention (CVI) measures. Emerson Collective was reported to be a funder of the collaborative along with other foundations such as California Endowment, the Annie E. Casey Foundation, the Ford Foundation, the Joyce Foundation, and the Kellogg Foundation. Other foundations funding the initiative include the Kresge Foundation, the MacArthur Foundation, Arnold Ventures, the Heising-Simons Foundation, George Soros’ Open Society Foundations, and the Charles and Lynn Schusterman Family Philanthropies. CVI strategies “act as an alternative to heavy-handed policing” by focusing its efforts on the minority of citizens who are perpetrators or targets of violent crime. CVI treats violence as a communicable disease rather than a violent crime and attempts to stop the “spread” of violence. ²⁷

Grantmaking

The Waverley Street Foundation, the Emerson Collective’s nonprofit arm, is one of the largest climate funders in the United States. The foundation’s stated mission focuses on regenerative agriculture, weather-dependent energy, and what it characterizes as “climate resiliency,” with a mandate to disburse its entire $3.5 billion endowment by 2035. According to the Chronicle of Philanthropy, the foundation had distributed more than $500 million in grants between 2021 and 2023 alone. It’s grantmaking allegedly focused on community-based organizations, specifically those in California, as well as both national and international advocacy organizations. ^{28 29 30}

According to a March 2026 report by think tank Pelican Institute for Public Policy, the Emerson Collective was identified as one of the top 30 out-of-state donors to member organizations of Louisianans Against False Solutions (LAFS), a Louisiana advocacy coalition that advocated a “transition away from fossil fuels.” The report identified at least $115.5 million in total out-of-state funding flowing to Louisiana-based groups working to oppose the state’s fuel-energy sector, with the Emerson Collective among the funders identified. ³¹

In 2019, the foundation granted $95 million to the Silicon Valley Community Foundation. ³²