Apple has named Arthur D. Levinson, as the company’s non-executive chairman of the Board. Levinson has been a co-lead director of Apple’s board since 2005, and has served on all three board committees— audit and finance, nominating and corporate governance, and compensation—and will continue to serve on the audit committee. Levinson gets innovation of the Apple kind. He has been a named inventor on 11 United States patents.
“Art has made enormous contributions to Apple since he joined the board in 2000,” said Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO. “He has been our longest serving co-lead director, and his insight and leadership are incredibly valuable to Apple, our employees and our shareholders.”
Levinson is chairman of Genentech. He joined the company as a research scientist in 1980, and served as Genentech’s CEO from 1995 to 2009. He is also a director of Amyris, NGM Biopharmaceuticals, and the Broad Institute (a research collaboration of MIT and Harvard). Levinson currently serves on the board of Roche, Scientific Consultants of the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center and the advisory council for the Lewis-Sigler Institute for Integrative Genomics.
Levinson is not going to be the only new face in the Apple board room. Robert A. Iger, president and CEO of Disney, will join Apple’s board and will serve on the audit committee.
“Bob and I have gotten to know one another very well over the past few years and on behalf of the entire board, we think he is going to make an extraordinary addition to our already very strong board,” said Tim Cook.
Tim Cook (CEO, Apple): His strategic vision for Disney is based on three fundamentals: generating the best creative content possible, fostering innovation and utilizing the latest technology, and expanding into new markets around the world which makes him a great fit for Apple.
About Apple
Okay, so this is redundant. Even Newton is not as popular, and the chap discovered gravity. But this is how Apple sees itself. The following lines accompanied the press release announcing Apple’s new appointments, and we thought you’d like reading about it.
Apple designs Macs, the best personal computers in the world, along with OS X, iLife, iWork and professional software. Apple leads the digital music revolution with its iPods and iTunes online store. Apple has reinvented the mobile phone with its revolutionary iPhone and App Store, and has recently introduced iPad 2 which is defining the future of mobile media and computing devices.