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About Tim Cook
Timothy Donald Cook (Tim Cook), born on November 1, 1960 is the current chief executive officer of Apple Inc. and an American business executive. Under Steve Jobs, Cook had served as the company’s co-founder’s chief operations officer. Cook began working for Apple in March 1998, first as an executive vice president for global sales and operations before moving up to senior vice president for worldwide operations.
On August 24, 2011, he was named CEO following the resignation of Jobs, who passed away in October of that same year due to illness. He has pushed for political reform of domestic and foreign surveillance, cybersecurity, American manufacturing, and environmental protection during his time as CEO.
When Cook took over Apple in 2011, the company’s revenue and earnings doubled, and its market value climbed from $348 billion to $1.9 trillion by 2020. Cook is a trustee of Duke University, his alma mater, and he serves on the boards of directors of the National Football Foundation and Nike, Inc. Cook is a philanthropist outside of Apple; he declared in March 2015 that he intended to give away his wealth to a good cause. Cook came out as gay in public for the first time as the CEO of a Fortune 500 business in 2014.
Quick Facts:
- Birth Name: Timothy Donald Cook
- Birth Date: November 1, 1960
- Birth Place: Robertsdale, Alabama, near Mobile.
- Gender: Male
- Career: American business executive and CEO, Apple Inc.
- Most Known For: Tim Cook, an engineer and businessman from the United States, has led Apple as CEO since August 2011.
Early Life:
On November 1, 1960, Timothy Donald Cook was born in Mobile, Alabama. He grew raised in the neighboring town of Robertsdale and was baptized in a Baptist church. Donald Cook, his father, worked at shipyards, and Geraldine Cook, his mother, was employed at a drugstore.
In 1978, Cook was salutatorian at Robertsdale High School in Alabama. He graduated from Auburn University in 1982 with a Bachelor of Science degree, majoring in industrial engineering, and Duke University in 1988 with a Master of Business Administration degree. Cook also received the distinction of being named a Fuqua Scholar, which is only granted to business school graduates who rank in the top 10% of their class.
Career:
Pre-Apple era
Following his graduation from graduate school, Cook entered the computer technology industry. After being employed by IBM, he rose through the ranks to take over as the company’s fulfillment director for North America, overseeing the production and distribution processes for the Personal Computer Company of IBM in both North and South America.
Cook worked for IBM for twelve years before joining Intelligent Electronics in 1994 as the chief operating officer of the Reseller Division. Three years later, he started working for Compaq Computer Corporation as a vice president of corporate materials, where his responsibilities included controlling and obtaining product inventory. But Cook’s tenure at Compaq was brief: after working there for six months, he left to take a job at Apple.
Career at Apple:
Early career
Steve Jobs invited Cook to join Apple in 1998. Cook stated in an Auburn University commencement speech that he met Jobs and made the decision to join Apple: “ I wanted to throw caution and logic to the wind and join Apple. My intuition already knew that joining Apple was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to work for the creative genius and to be on the executive team that could resurrect a great American company.”
When Cook started working for Apple in early 1998, the business was experiencing diminishing earnings rather than growth, and it had not yet invented the iMac, iPod, iPhone, or iPad. As Cook puts it, he was talked out of taking the position at Apple because of how uncertain the company’s future appeared. But as soon as Cook joined the team as vice president, everything suddenly changed. Less than a year after his Apple debut, the company was turning a profit. This was a dramatic change from a recent report that revealed a $1 billion net loss for the previous fiscal year.
As Cook ascended to the position of executive vice president and eventually chief operating officer in January 2007 , he had accountability for overseeing sales and operations across the globe, directing the Macintosh business, and fostering ongoing partnerships with suppliers and resellers.
Apple chief executive (since 2011)
The board of directors at Apple granted Jobs’ request for a third medical leave of absence in January 2011. At that time, Jobs made the majority of the company’s big decisions, with Cook handling the majority of day-to-day operations.
After a protracted fight with cancer, former CEO and Apple co-founder Steve Jobs passed away in October 2011, leaving Cook as the company’s new leader effective August 2011. Cook is not just the company’s CEO but also a member of its board of directors. Time featured Cook on its yearly list of the “100 Most Influential People in the World” in April of 2012. Cook reorganized the company’s executive staff on October 29, 2012.
Cook gained notoriety on February 28, 2014, when he urged investors to “get out of the stock” if they disagreed with the company’s stance on climate change and sustainability.
Apple announced in May 2014 that it had acquired Beats Music and Beats Electronics for $3 billion, making it its largest acquisition to that point. Dr. Dre and Jimmy Iovine, the co-founders of Beats, agreed to take executive positions at Apple.
Cook then revealed OSX Yosemite, the most recent iteration of Apple’s desktop and mobile operating systems, at the Worldwide Developers Conference in June 2014. Cook announced the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus in September of that same year. These phones featured larger screens along with new features including “Burst Selfies” and Apple Pay. Additionally, he unveiled the first new product to be released under his leadership: the “Apple Watch,” a wearable fitness and health tracker that will go on sale in 2015.
In 2016, Cook inked a $275 billion deal with Chinese officials. Cook personally negotiated the deal, which opened the door for Apple to impose more censorship in China. For instance, Chinese terms like “human rights” and “democracy” were banned, Muslim content was removed, and Chinese-claimed islands were made to appear larger on Apple Maps, aiding China in the Senkaku Islands dispute. Ten years after Cook took over as CEO, Cook received a payout of about $750 million by selling over five million shares in the company.
Cook remained in charge of new product development, overseeing the introduction of apps such as Clips, which allowed users to create short movies for social media. A few months after making its debut in the spring of 2017, Apple revealed the iPhone X, which caused a stir in the tech community thanks to its face recognition technology.
In order to provide consumers with access to content from a variety of sources, the firm along the road released the Apple News app. Apple debuted a section dedicated to the 2018 midterm elections in June 2018, promising unique content like The Washington Post’s Election Now dashboard until November along with carefully selected content from reliable websites.
In October 2019, Cook was named chairman of the advisory board for the Tsinghua University School of Economics for a three-year term.
Personal Life:
Cook is an avid fitness fanatic who likes to ride, hike, and visit the gym. He has a reputation for being reclusive, hiding away in an off-campus workout center, and not disclosing much information about his personal life to the public.
Cook came out as gay in an opinion article he penned for Bloomberg Businessweek in October 2014. He wrote, “I have never denied my sexuality, but up until now, I haven’t publicly acknowledged it either. To be clear, I think being homosexual is one of the greatest blessings God has given me, and I’m proud of it.”
Even though a large number of employees were aware of his gay orientation, he made an effort to put Apple’s customers and products above his personal life. Cook joined the ranks of Fortune 500 CEOs as the first and only openly gay CEO.
