Lisa Brennan-Jobs

Lisa Brennan-Jobs
Brennan-Jobs in August 2005
Born	Lisa Nicole Brennan (1978-05-17) May 17, 1978 All One Farm commune, Oregon
Nationality	American
Alma mater	Harvard University King's College London
Relatives	Steve Jobs (father) Chrisann Brennan (mother) Mona Simpson (aunt) Laurene Powell Jobs (step - mother)

Lisa Nicole Brennan-Jobs (born Lisa Nicole Brennan; May 17, 1978) is the first child of Apple co-founder Steve Jobs and Jobs' high school girlfriend, Chrisann Brennan.

Birth and the Apple Lisa

Lisa Nicole Brennan was born on May 17, 1978 on Robert Friedland's All One Farm commune, "about forty miles southwest of" Portland, Oregon. Her mother, Chrisann Brennan and her father, Steve Jobs, first met at Homestead High School in 1972 and had an on and off again relationship for the next five years. In 1977, Chrisann and Steve shared a house near the Apple office in Cupertino with Daniel Kottke (Steve's Reed College friend), as all three worked at Apple. It was during this period that Chrisann became pregnant. Steve, however, did not assume responsibility for the pregnancy, which led Chrisann to end the relationship, leave their shared home, and support herself by cleaning houses.

In 1978, Chrisann moved to the All One Farm commune to have the baby. Steve was not present for the baby's birth, however. He only came up three days after the birth as Friedland (another Reed College friend) persuaded him to do so. While there, Chrisann and Steve named the baby Lisa. A short while later, Steve would give the same name to the computer project he was working on, The Apple Lisa. He had his team come up with the phrase, "Local Integrated Software Architecture" as an alternative explanation for the name given to the project. Decades later Steve admitted that "obviously, it was named for my daughter."

Paternity case and reconciliation

Steve, however, publicly denied paternity after she was born, which led to a legal case. Even after a DNA paternity test established him as her father, Steve continued to deny it. It required him to give Chrisann $385 a month in addition to returning the money to the state that she had received from welfare. Steve gave her $500 a month after Apple went public, and Steve became a millionaire. Michael Moritz interviewed Steve, Crissann, and a number of others for the 1982 Time Person of the Year special issue (released on January 3, 1983). In his interview, Steve questioned the reliability of the paternity test (which stated that the "probability of paternity for Jobs, Steven... is 94.1%"). Steve responded by arguing that "28% of the male population of the United States could be the father." Rather than name Steve "Person of the Year" (as he and many others expected while giving the interviews), the issue was instead titled: "Machine of the Year: The Computer Moves In." The thematic change occurred after Moritz heard both comments about both Steve's management style and about Brennan-Jobs.

Years later, after Steve left Apple, "he apologized many times over for his behavior" to Lisa and her mother and "said that he never took responsibility when he should have, and that he was sorry." After reconciling with her, Lisa wanted to change her name and Steve was happy to do so. Steve legally changed her birth certificate, shifting her name from Lisa Brennan to Lisa Brennan-Jobs. Chrisann credits the change in Steve to the influence of his newly found biological sister, the American author Mona Simpson, who worked to repair the relationship between Brennan-Jobs and Steve.

Education and career

When Brennan-Jobs was living with her mother, she attended The Nueva School. Later, after she moved in with her father, she attended Palo Alto High School. She began Harvard University in 1996 and studied overseas for one year at King's College London. While a student at Harvard, she wrote for The Harvard Crimson. She graduated from Harvard in 2000.

After graduation, Brennan-Jobs moved to Manhattan to work as a writer. She has written for The The Southwest Review, The Massachusetts Review, The Harvard Advocate, Spiked, Vogue, and O, The Oprah Magazine.

Representations in film and literature

Feature films

• In the 1999 TNT made-for-TV film, Pirates of Silicon Valley, Brennan-Jobs is played by Brooke Radding.
• In the 2013 film Jobs, Brennan-Jobs is played as a child by Ava Acres, and as an adult by Annika Bertea.
• In the 2015 film Steve Jobs, Brennan-Jobs is portrayed at different ages by Perla Haney-Jardine, Ripley Sobo, and Makenzie Moss in director Danny Boyle's film. Screenwriter Aaron Sorkin notes that he discussed the screenplay with Brennan-Jobs in advance and that she is the "heroine of the film."

Literature

• Mona Simpson wrote three novels about her biological family with Steve Jobs. A Regular Guy (1996) is a work of fiction that is loosely based on the story of Jobs, Lisa, and Chrisann.

External links

• Official website
• Template:IMDb character