Disney shareholders have re-elected Steve Jobs to the company’s board of directors, despite opposition from the AFL-CIO, the labor union federation.
As previously reported, the AFL-CIO opposed Jobs’s re-election because of his poor health and his job as CEO of Apple. The union argued that Jobs already had his hands full and advised shareholders not ro re-elect him.
Nonetheless, Jobs was re-elected on Wednesday at Disney’s annual shareholder meeting in Utah, according to Bloomberg.
With 7% of Disney’s stock, Jobs is the largest individual shareholder in the company. He has been a director at Disney since 2006, when Disney bought his other company, Pixar, for $7.4 billion.
Leander Kahney is the editor and publisher of Cult of Mac.
Leander is a longtime technology reporter and the author of six acclaimed books about Apple, including two New York Times bestsellers: Jony Ive: The Genius Behind Apple’s Greatest Products and Inside Steve’s Brain, a biography of Steve Jobs.
He’s also written a top-selling biography of Apple CEO Tim Cook and authored Cult of Mac and Cult of iPod, which both won prestigious design awards. Most recently, he was co-author of Cult of Mac, 2nd Edition.
Leander has been reporting about Apple and technology for nearly 30 years.
Before founding Cult of Mac as an independent publication, Leander was news editor at Wired.com, where he was responsible for the day-to-day running of the Wired.com website. He headed up a team of six section editors, a dozen reporters and a large pool of freelancers. Together the team produced a daily digest of stories about the impact of science and technology, and won several awards, including several Webby Awards, 2X Knight-Batten Awards for Innovation in Journalism and the 2010 MIN (Magazine Industry Newsletter) award for best blog, among others.
Before being promoted to news editor, Leander was Wired.com’s senior reporter, primarily covering Apple. During that time, Leander published a ton of scoops, including the first in-depth report about the development of the iPod. Leander attended almost every keynote speech and special product launch presented by Steve Jobs, including the historic launches of the iPhone and iPad. He also reported from almost every Macworld Expo in the late ’90s and early ‘2000s, including, sadly, the last shows in Boston, San Francisco and Tokyo. His reporting for Wired.com formed the basis of the first Cult of Mac book, and subsequently this website.
Before joining Wired, Leander was a senior reporter at the legendary MacWeek, the storied and long-running weekly that documented Apple and its community in the 1980s and ’90s.
Leander has written for Wired magazine (including the Issue 16.04 cover story about Steve Jobs’ leadership at Apple, entitled Evil/Genius), Scientific American, The Guardian, The Observer, The San Francisco Chronicle and many other publications.
Leander has a postgrad diploma in artificial intelligence from the University of Aberdeen, and a BSc (Hons) in experimental psychology from the University of Sussex.
He has a diploma in journalism from the UK’s National Council for the Training of Journalists.
Leander lives in San Francisco, California, and is married with four children. He’s an avid biker and has ridden in many long-distance bike events, including California’s legendary Death Ride.
You can find out more about Leander on LinkedIn and Facebook. You can follow him on X at @lkahney or Instagram.
12 responses to “Steve Jobs Is Re-Elected to Disney’s Board Despite Opposition”
He’s done alot more for Disney than those opposing him give credit for
The headline should probably read “… mild opposition.”
Never a doubt. AFL-CIO sucks!
This is great. Now, a great mind again has been added to Disney’s top ranks! Thanks for sharing the news here.
Another exercise in insular business politics. Granted, Jobs may be exceptional, but this is a perfect example of how American business has profited by destroying the economy. No matter the consequence, protecting your own is first priority. This led us to the housing bubble, to the bank failures, to median income lower than it was 40 years ago while CEOs who used to make 40 times the average worker now make 400 times that.
To compare, if your best worker only showed up for work one day a week would you even keep him on the payroll, never mind give him a leadership position? Not a chance. But these rules don’t apply to the barons and to the richest of the rich. Because Jobs is on the board of directors he can show up about once a year – and not even bother to “phone it in,” which he probably has the ability to do better than anyone else in America?
What’s a Labor Union Federation?