Why Skills-First Leadership Is Replacing the Ivy League Playbook in the C-Suite
05/23/2025
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The old prestige pyramid—where Ivy League degrees and blue-chip consulting backgrounds paved the way to the CEO seat—is cracking.
April 27, 2021: -On Monday, Apple announced that it plans to open a new campus in the Raleigh, North Carolina area.
Apple will spend above 1 billion on the campus, and it will employ 3,000 people working on technology that includes software engineering and machine learning.
The campus indicates Apple’s continued expansion beyond its headquarters in Cupertino, California, where most of its engineers are based. Apple is also planning to build a 1 billion campus in Austin, Texas, which is expected to open to employees next year.
Apple’s expansion will be in North Carolina’s Research Triangle area, which gets its name because of the nearby three universities, North Carolina State University, Duke University, and the University of North Carolina.
Apple CEO Tim Cook and COO Jeff Williams both are graduated from Duke. “As a North Carolina native, I’m thrilled Apple is expanding and creating new long-term job opportunities in the community I grew up in,” Williams said.
Apple joins other Silicon Valley technology companies that expand outside the Bay Area to be accessible to a broader pool of engineering talent and respond to high housing prices and additional costs of living in the region in some cases.
On Monday, Apple said it was expanding in other cities rapidly where it has engineering operations. It is planning to employ 5,000 people in San Diego, California, 3,000 people in Culver City in Los Angeles, and 700 employees in Boulder, Colorado, by the year 2026. Apple said it employs 1,000 people in Seattle, Washington, and plans to make it double up to 2,000. In total, Apple is planning to add 20,000 jobs in the U.S. over the next five years, Apple said.
However, Apple will continue to be based in Silicon Valley, where it has nearly 25,000 employees, which include 12,000 employees in its loop-shaped headquarters. In total, Apple has 147,000 full-time employees, including the retail workers, it said last year in a filing.
The old prestige pyramid—where Ivy League degrees and blue-chip consulting backgrounds paved the way to the CEO seat—is cracking.
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