Powell Jobs Climate Group Hires Lawyer From Meta-Backed Charity

The Waverley Street Foundation, an organization formed by Laurene Powell Jobs to fight climate change, has hired Emiliano Martinez as its first general counsel.

Martinez spent the past four years as a legal director for the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, a philanthropic endeavor backed by Meta Platforms Inc. co-founder and chief executive Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan.

Martinez began his career as a litigator at Irell & Manella before going on to work for two other nonprofits prior to joining the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative. Waverley Street added Martinez’s name to its list of staff this month, and he acknowledged his new job in a statement posted to his LinkedIn profile.

Powell Jobs, the billionaire widow of Apple Inc. co-founder Steve Jobs, announced in 2021 that her family office, Emerson Collective LLC, would invest $3.5 billion over 10 years with Waverley Street to help the Palo Alto, Calif.-based nonprofit combat a growing climate crisis.

Martinez and Waverley Street did not respond to requests for comment.

Waverley Street recruited Jared Blumenfeld last summer be its president and inaugural leader. Blumenfeld is an environmental lawyer who most recently served as head of California’s Environmental Protection Agency.

O’Melveny & Myers has handled trademark work for Waverley Street, which takes its name from a street in Palo Alto where the Jobs family lived.

As for Jobs’s Emerson Collective, Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati advised the family office in 2017 on its acquisition of a majority stake in the Atlantic, a political and cultural magazine.

Wilson Sonsini re-hired Danielle “Dani” Glazer Signaigo as a corporate associate in San Diego after she spent three years in-house at Emerson Collective. The investment firm hired a replacement counsel in Scott Exner, a former top lawyer at Alltrue, a socially conscious startup that folded last year.

Christine Brook, general counsel for the Emerson Collective, joined the organization in 2017 after spending time at three law firms, including Wilson Sonsini, which has longstanding ties to Apple.

Former Apple lawyer Kathryn “Katie” Tague was named general counsel a year ago for the XQ Institute, an Oakland, Calif.-based and education-focused nonprofit that’s one of many organizations supported by Powell Jobs and her for-profit Emerson Collective, Bloomberg Law reported in January.