Laurene Jobs co-founded a natural foods company after completing business school. But she told the San Francisco Chronicle in 2008 that, in the late 1990s, she was planning to pull back from business obligations and devote more time to her family. Then, her experience as a Carlmont High volunteer led Jobs to launch the College Track program with Carlos Watson, a friend and fellow volunteer at Carlmont.
College Track today has branches in East Palo Alto, Oakland, San Francisco, New Orleans and Aurora, Colo. The organization provides coaching, tutoring and help in obtaining financial assistance for kids who are often the first in their families to consider going to college. While Laurene Jobs no longer runs the program, she is the head of its board.
Jobs also invested and served on the board of Achieva, a startup that Watson cofounded, which made online educational tools. In 2005, she co-led a $20 million fundraising campaign by the nonprofit Global Fund for Women, which invests in local initiatives to improve women's health and education around the world.
The 2005 campaign was prompted by concern the war in Iraq would make life more difficult for women and families in that part of the world, Jobs told this newspaper then. "We want to be able to spend the money quickly, not have it sit in an endowment."
Jobs also serves on other nonprofit boards, including the national board of Teach For America, which recruits recent college graduates to spend two years teaching in low-income schools. She was named by President Barack Obama last year to a panel that advises the White House on community-based social programs.