THE INFLUENCERS
The LGBT movers and shakers
The late Steve Jobs is credited with dragging Apple from near bankruptcy in 1997 to being (according to Forbes in 2016) the eighth biggest public company in the world. Yet a significant player was Timothy Donald Cook, head-hunted from Compaq in 1998 by Jobs to help move Apple into the consumer market. Cook reduced costs and made long-term investments ensuring stable supplies for the company’s successive “blockbuster” products — iPods, iPhones and iPads. He was Jobs’s chosen successor in 2011. Three years later Cook became the first Chief Executive of a Fortune 500 company to publicly identify as gay. Other: Joel Simkhai (Grindr); Jon “maddog” Hall (Exec Director, Linux International)