On Wednesday evening, the basement of the psychology building filled to capacity as Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak and his wife Janet Wozniak took the stage for \u201cWell-being with Woz,\u201d a conversation centered on mental health, happiness and the philosophy of a life well-lived.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The event was moderated by Cherrial Odell \u201925, co-president of Stanford Mental Health Outreach and Wellness Buddies, and presented in partnership with Stanford Speakers Bureau, Stanford Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineering (IEEE) and the office of Substance Use Programs Education & Resources (SUPER).<\/p>\n
Odell opened the evening by promoting the \u201cNot Alone Challenge,\u201d a mental health toolkit and social media campaign, before introducing the Wozniaks on a deeply personal note. She credited the Inspiring Children Foundation, a mental health program that the couple supports, with saving her life after she attempted suicide at 13 amid a struggle with depression and anxiety. \u201cThey kind of came into my life during some of the more deeply healing phases of my journey,\u201d she told the audience.<\/p>\n
Asked how he has maintained childlike wonder amid extraordinary success, Wozniak traced his outlook to his teenage years. He described falling in love with digital logic after discovering an engineering journal explaining how computers process ones and zeros, despite there being no books available in public libraries on the subject at the time.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Wozniak recalled being a shy kid who spent hours walking home from high school deliberately shaping who he wanted to be, committed to avoiding conflict and arguments. He pointed to two principles that have guided him ever since: a pacifist refusal to fight back when struck, and a commitment to responding with kindness even when others speak badly of him.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Music, he said, was foundational. Early Bob Dylan lyrics shaped his thinking, but it was the line \u201cno good guy, no bad guy, only you and me, and we just disagree\u201d in Dave Mason\u2019s \u201cWe Just Disagree\u201d that became a personal mantra for Wozniak.<\/p>\n
Wozniak emphasized that he never chased money or industry-building ambitions. He recalled giving away roughly $10 million of his stock to about 80 Apple employees, including Dan Kottke, and selling pre-IPO shares to colleagues because he felt they deserved to be founders too. \u201cI never sold out,\u201d he said, contrasting himself with peers whose true selves he believes were \u201crevealed\u201d rather than being \u201cchanged\u201d by sudden wealth.<\/p>\n
Long before Apple, Wozniak told his father in sixth grade that he wanted to be \u201can electrical engineer first, fifth-grade teacher second.\u201d After Apple, he made good on the second half of that promise, teaching fifth graders for eight years without press coverage. His advice on raising children echoed this independence. When his daughter, a nationally-ranked athlete accepted to Ivy League schools and Stanford, chose to attend UCLA, Wozniak said he was proud rather than disappointed. \u201cThat tells me what you care about,\u201d he said, adding that he taught his children that learning mattered more than grades.<\/p>\n
Janet Wozniak recounted their unconventional meeting on the \u201cGeek Cruise,\u201d where she taught Apple education classes to roughly 400 attendees. Steve attended her classes for two consecutive years, in the Caribbean and on the Mexican Riviera, asking notoriously hard questions but never speaking to her personally. \u201cI couldn\u2019t talk to her,\u201d Steve admitted. \u201cI didn\u2019t even know her name.\u201d<\/p>\n
Eventually, Steve called the cruise organizer to track Janet down for a charity event at his home, where 10 children from New Jersey, most born around the time of Sept. 11, 2001 and dealing with significant medical or mental health challenges, were visiting through Make-A-Wish. Their wish had been Apple laptops, and the week-long visit became the foundation of Steve and Janet\u2019s relationship.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey say opposites attract, but they stay together because they have a common denominator,\u201d Janet said. \u201cOur common denominator was philosophy and values.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Wozniaks shared a string of stories that drew steady laughter. Janet recounted a recent prank Steve pulled pretending to have an asthma attack just weeks after she had been hospitalized for COVID-19 and asthma, though she noted that when she actually couldn\u2019t breathe, Steve called 911 instantly despite their constant joking.<\/p>\n
The couple married on Aug. 8, 2008 at 8:00 p.m. at a Segway polo world championship in Indianapolis, a sport Steve helped popularize with Apple coworkers who bought Segways and invented rules together as \u201cThe Silicon Valley Aftershocks.\u201d<\/p>\n
Midway through the event, Steve pulled out a pad of perforated two-dollar bills he prints from a high-quality printer that meets U.S. government specifications, making them legal tender. He estimated the Secret Service has been called about him at least four times, once even reading him his Miranda rights, but the bills have remained legal each time.<\/p>\n
Asked what they would leave the audience with, both Wozniaks offered guidance rooted in authenticity.<\/p>\n
\u201cBe honest with yourself,\u201d Steve said. \u201cDon\u2019t be what other people tell you you should be. You know it inside. Follow your heart.\u201d He recalled following his own heart to the University of Colorado Boulder as a freshman, seeing snow for the first time in his life, despite being a shoo-in for MIT.<\/p>\n
Janet, who described herself as a mathematician, computer scientist and biologist working in male-dominated fields, told students: \u201cDo whatever it is that you wanna do, whatever you\u2019re passionate about, because when you go to work, you\u2019re gonna spend a lot of time working.\u201d She added that loving what you do makes you better at it than anyone competing without that passion.<\/p>\n
Steve closed with words of wisdom about standing out: \u201cTry to be better. Do things differently. Look for what other people are not doing? What\u2019s a different approach?\u2026 I don\u2019t care what society says I should be.\u201d<\/p>\n
After the event, students lingered to discuss what they had heard. Felix Janos Horvath, a visiting student researcher at Stanford Medicine, called it a \u201creally fun talk.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI thought they were both really sweet,\u201d said attendee Joshua Gottschalk M.S. \u201926. \u201cI thought it was really interesting structurally, they didn\u2019t really have a set agenda. He wanted to show who he was and show people that you can be super famous and popular and make a bunch of money, and you can still just be a good person.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"On Wednesday evening, the basement of the psychology building filled to capacity as Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":496011,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[276],"tags":[3083,311,30679,164,2597,18,12123,135,19,135924,17,8180,80774,5989,3255,167,502,337,36360,40823,216054,69758,216055,184054,14081,11783,753,216056],"class_list":["post-496010","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mental-health","tag-anxiety","tag-apple","tag-co-founder","tag-depression","tag-education","tag-eire","tag-event","tag-health","tag-ie","tag-ieee","tag-ireland","tag-journey","tag-joy","tag-learning","tag-life","tag-mental-health","tag-mentalhealth","tag-music","tag-positivity","tag-speaker","tag-ssb","tag-stanford","tag-stanford-speakers-bureau","tag-steve-wozniak","tag-success","tag-super","tag-tech","tag-wozniak"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/116613403280127793","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/496010","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=496010"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/496010\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/496011"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=496010"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=496010"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=496010"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}