Joanna Hoffman
| Joanna Hoffman | |
|---|---|
| Born | Joanna Karine Hoffman July 27, 1955 |
| Alma mater | Massachusetts Institute of Technology University of Chicago |
| Known for | Member of both the original Macintosh team and NeXT team |
| Spouse(s) | Alain Rossmann |
| Children | 2 |
Joanna Karine Hoffman (born July 27, 1955)[1] is a marketing executive. She was one of the original members of both the Apple Computer Macintosh team and the NeXT team.[2][3]
Contents
Early life
Hoffman was born in the Soviet Union, and is the daughter of the Polish-Jewish film director Jerzy Hoffman and his Armenian ex-wife Marlene. She is estranged from her father, who has directed several notable films, including The Deluge (1974), which was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film for Poland. Her family suffered during World War II and her great-grandparents died in the Holocaust. Her father was deported to Siberia, but survived.[4][2][5] She has a background in anthropology, physics, and linguistics,[6] a Bachelor of Science in Humanities and Science from MIT, and pursued a doctorate (which she did not complete) in archaeology at the University of Chicago at the Oriental Institute. In 1979 she was scheduled to travel to Iran for an archaeology dig. She stopped in Poland to visit her grandmother, and received word from Iran that she would have to return to the United States because of the Iranian Revolution.[6]
Career
She was on a leave of absence from the University of Chicago when she was encouraged by her friends to attend a lecture at Xerox PARC in California.[7] While there she had "a heated discussion after the lecture" with Jef Raskin.[7] The discussion focused on "what computers should look like and how they should improve people's lives."[7] Raskin was so impressed with Hoffman, that he asked her to interview for a position at Apple.[7] She began on the Macintosh project in October 1980[8] as part of Raskin's initial team of Burrell Smith, Bud Tribble, and Brian Howard.[9] At the time she began, the Mac was "still a research project"[8] Her position "constituted the entire Macintosh marketing team for the first year and a half of the project."[6][8] She also wrote the "first draft of the Macintosh User Interface Guidelines."[8] Hoffman would eventually run the International Marketing Team which brought the Mac to Europe and Asia.[8] She later followed Steve Jobs to NeXT, as one of its original members.[2][3]
Hoffman had a reputation at both Apple and NeXT as one of the few who could successfully engage with Jobs. In both 1981 and 1982, she won a satirical award at Apple given to "the person who did the best job of standing up to" Jobs (Jobs was aware of the award and liked it).[2]
During the early 1990s, Hoffman was vice president of Marketing at General Magic, retiring in 1995 to spend more time with her family.[8]
Personal life
Hoffman is married to Alain Rossmann, who also worked at Apple, with whom she has two sons.[7]
In media
British actress Kate Winslet portrayed Hoffman in the 2015 film, Steve Jobs, starring Michael Fassbender as Jobs.[10] Winslet won a Golden Globe Award, among numerous additional awards nominations for her performance.[11][12]
References
- ↑ Joanna Hoffman public record accessed 11-7-2015
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- ↑ jerzy-hoffman biographyaccessed 12-26-2015
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Further reading
- Hertzfeld, Andy. Revolution in the Valley: The Insanely Great Story of How the Mac was Made. Sebastopol: O'Reilly Media, 2005.
- Isaacson, Walter. Steve Jobs. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2011.
External links
- Joanna Hoffman @ Andy Hertzfeld's The Original Macintosh (folklore.org)
- Rosen, Adam. "How Xerox PARC Helped Produce the Macintosh Business Plan." Cultofmac.com, January 20, 2014.
