Tim Cook

Timothy Donald Cook is an American business executive who has been the chief executive officer of Apple, Inc.( AAPL) since 2011. Cook previously served as the company's chief operating officer under its co-founder Steve Jobs. 

Cook joined Apple in March 1998 as a senior vice president for worldwide operations, and then served as the executive vice president for worldwide sales and operations. He was made the chief executive on August 24, 2011, prior to Jobs' death in October of that year. During his tenure as the chief executive, he has advocated for the political reformation of international and domestic surveillance, cybersecurity, American manufacturing, and environmental preservation. Since 2011 when he took over Apple, to 2020, Cook doubled the company's revenue and profit, and the company's market value increased from $348 billion to $1.9 trillion.

Cook also serves on the boards of directors of Nike, Inc. and the National Football Foundation; he is a trustee of Duke University, his alma mater. Outside of Apple, Cook engages in philanthropy, and in March 2015, he said he planned to donate his fortune to charity. In 2014, Cook became the first chief executive of a Fortune 500 company to publicly come out as gay.

Career :

Apple chief executive (2011–present)

After Jobs resigned as CEO and became chairman of the board, Cook was named the new chief executive officer of Apple Inc. on August 24, 2011. Six weeks later, on October 5, 2011, Jobs died due to complications from pancreatic cancer. Forbes contributor Robin Ferracone wrote in September 2011: "Jobs and Cook proceeded to forge a strong partnership, and rescued the company from its death spiral, which took it from $11 billion in revenue in 1995 down to less than $6 billion in 1998 ... Under their leadership, the company went from its nadir to a remarkable $100 billion today". In April 2012, Time included Cook on its annual "100 Most Influential People in the World" list.

On October 29, 2012, Cook made major changes to the company's executive team. Scott Forstall resigned as senior vice president of iOS after the poorly received launch of Apple Maps, and became an advisor to Cook until he eventually departed from the company in 2013. John Browett, who was senior VP of retail, was dismissed six months after he commenced at Apple, when he received 100,000 shares worth US$60 million. Forstall's duties were divided among four other Apple executives: design SVP Jony Ive assumed leadership of Apple's human interface team; Craig Federighi became the new head of iOS software engineering; services chief Eddy Cue became responsible for Maps and Siri; and Bob Mansfield, previously SVP of hardware engineering, became the head of a new technology group.

Cook made the executive changes after the third quarter of the fiscal year, when revenues and profits grew less than predicted. Forstall's resignation was widely seen as a dismissal, allegedly caused by Cook's desire to reduce "rivalries between executives"; 127  and drew criticism, as Forstall had been seen as a possible successor to Cook. On February 28, 2014, Cook made headlines when he challenged shareholders to "get out of the stock" if they did not share the company's views on sustainability and climate change. In May 2016, Cook traveled to China to meet with government officials there after the closure of Apple's online iTunes Store and Apple Books store by the Chinese government.

In 2016, some analysts compared Cook to former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, claiming that innovation had died down since he replaced Jobs, similar to when Ballmer became Microsoft CEO in 2000. In December 2017, Cook was a speaker at the World Internet Conference in China.

Cook was appointed chairman of the advisory board for Tsinghua University's economics school in October 2019 for a three-year term.

Rep. Tom Malinowski, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and several other lawmakers criticized Cook over Apple's decision to remove an app used by pro-democracy protesters in Hong Kong from its App Store. They accused Apple of censorship and co-signed a letter to Cook that read, "Apple's decisions last week to accommodate the Chinese government by taking down HKMaps is deeply concerning. We urge you in the strongest terms to reverse course, to demonstrate that Apple puts values above market access, and to stand with the brave men and women fighting for basic rights and dignity in Hong Kong." Cook explained in an internal letter why the company removed the Hong Kong mapping app used by protesters to coordinate movements. In 2016, Cook signed a $275 billion deal with Chinese officials. The deal – personally negotiated by Cook – paved the way for increased censorship by Apple in China, for example the removal of Muslim content, preventing users from entering numbers that refer to the date of the Tiananmen Square Massacre, censoring Chinese words like "human rights" or "democracy", and manipulating Apple Maps to support China in the Senkaku Islands dispute by making Chinese-claimed islands appear larger than they actually are.

In August 2021, Cook received an approximate $750m payout, selling more than five million shares in Apple, after marking ten years in the job.