As CEO of the world’s most valuable company, Tim Cook can pick and choose where he gives interviews. Which is why it’s kind of cool that he just gave an interview to high school student Rebecca Kahn.
In an article published by the National Center for Women & Information Technology, Kahn recalls her experience speaking Tim Cook — and the unlikely way it all came about.
Kahn says she started off by emailing Tim Cook as part of an assignment for her computer class. “It was my senior year, and I wanted to interview not just a real leader in technology, but one whose philosophy and ideas about life were motivating as well,” she writes. “As soon as the assignment was announced, one name immediately came to mind: Apple CEO Tim Cook. He is not just in charge of the world’s largest tech company, but he personally advocates and stands up for things he believes are right.”
Amazingly, Cook actually took the time to email back and set up a time to speak with the high school student. She notes that Cook started the interview by telling her to, “Call me Tim — Mr. Cook is my father’s name.”
During their conversation, he shared his thoughts on wanting kids to start coding at a young age, and his belief that society and companies can improve when “everybody is treated with dignity and respect.”
Apple, he said, is “all about doing just a few things, but the few things that we do, we want to make the very best in the world. Because we believe those make a much larger difference in the world than if we were to focus on just making the most.”
In addition, Cook described German chancellor Angela Merkel as a, “phenomenal leader not only for Germany but the world,” and expressed his admiration for Rosa Parks as “quite the hero” who, “accelerated the civil rights act by years” with her courage.
While there’s little in the interview that Cook hasn’t expressed elsewhere, it’s pretty great that he would make himself accessible to a high school student in order to offer a few words of wisdom. Like his predecessor, Steve Jobs, Tim Cook takes the time to answer emails from customers — and has a publicly available email address in order to do so.
Luke Dormehl is a U.K.-based journalist and author, with a background working in documentary film for Channel 4 and the BBC. He is the author of The Apple Revolution and The Formula: How Algorithms Solve All Our Problems … and Create More, both published by Penguin/Random House. His tech writing has also appeared in Wired, Fast Company, Techmeme and other publications.
One response to “Tim Cook talks Apple values in rare interview with high schooler”
It’s great that Dim Tim can find some time out from his busy schedule, not delivering a simple speaker in time for Christmas, to virtue signal about his “values.” Values which apparently include shopping all Apples’ Chinese users data to a, nod nod wink wink, Chinese company where it’s doubtless perfectly safe from Chinese Government…not!
However Dim Tim must be very miffed that the German voters don’t seem to share his view that the “German chancellor Angela Merkel is a, “phenomenal leader not only for Germany but the world” since she “led” her party its lowest share of the vote since the early 1950’s.
Perhaps some grown-up might please take Dim Tim aside and ask him to dial down on bigging up the idea of a Germany Chancellor as a ‘phenomenal leader for the world’ since every couple of generations they tend to come to that conclusion all by themselves thus bringing ruin down upon the heads of everyone in the process. Americans, albeit not Dim Tim, must surely be aware of this too since, invariably, they’re required to come in and mop up the mess.