Jerome B. York became part of Apple’s board of directors in August of 1997 and remained in this role for almost thirteen years until his death, in March of 2010.

Steve Jobs - Jerry York part of new Board of DirectorsYork’s addition to the board was briefly introduced at Macworld Boston ’97 by Steve Jobs with the following words:

Jerry did a lot of the turnaround work at Chrysler and IBM and is extremely well-known and respected in the financial community for his work.

For the occasion there was a video put together with sound bytes from all of the new members, among which were also Gareth Chang from Hughes International, Bill Campbell from Intuit, Larry Ellison from Oracle and Ed Woolard from DuPont.

This is what Jerry York said about Apple and about the concepts of Reality, Experience, Focus and Passion:

Jerry York - Apple's new Board of Directors intro

  • Companies have to look at everything they’re doing and determine […] what are core componencies, what are the core parts of the business.
     
  • At Chrysler we had to take nearly 4 billion dollars out of the cost (?) structure to get Chrysler fully competitive, particularly with the japanese.
     
  • Apple has very strong positions in two market segments: first education and secondly creative content.
     
  • Whenever you have a strong position in a market segment you can capitalize on that.
     
  • And companies can spend billions of dollars to build their brand. Apple does not have to do that: it’s already been done.