Former Apple COO Jeff Williams Joining Disney's Board of Directors

Tuesday December 9, 2025 2:01 pm PST by Juli Clover

Former Apple chief operating officer Jeff Williams may soon join Disney's board of directors. The Walt Disney Company Board of Directors nominated Williams to be a new independent director, and he will stand for election at the 2026 annual shareholders meeting.

Apple Event Jeff Williams
Williams was Apple's chief operating officer from December 2015 to November 2025, when he retired from Apple. Williams was in charge of Apple's worldwide operations, customer service, and support. He also led the Apple Watch engineering and health initiatives, and headed up the design team from 2023 until his retirement.

In a statement, Williams said that he looks forward to contributing to Disney's growth.

"I have long admired Disney's legacy of pairing imagination with innovation--leveraging new technologies in bold, creative ways to bring to life timeless stories and entertain its guests," said Williams. "It is an honor to be nominated to the board of this storied company. I look forward to working with Disney's talented leadership team and contributing to the company's ongoing journey of creativity and excellence."

Disney's board will expand to 11 members with Williams, and he is set to join Bob Iger, GM CEO Mary Barra, former Morgan Stanley Executive Chairman James Gorman, former Sky CEO Jeremy Darroch, Lululemon CEO Calvin McDonald, and others.

Tag: Jeff Williams

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Top Rated Comments

CalMin

10 months ago

These people always make me feel lazy. According to Google, Jeff Williams has a net worth of $259 million. Honestly, if I had a quarter of a billion dollars, I can’t imagine spending 200–300 hours a year serving as a Disney board member.

Then again, maybe that’s exactly why I don’t have a quarter of a billion dollars. 🤷‍♂️

Score: 9 Votes (Like | Disagree)

CarAnalogy

10 months ago

Reading that list of board members explains why their stock is in the toilet. Every one of those companies is completely out of touch and disgustingly greedy.

Just look how well Mary Barra has handled tech at GM for example...

Score: 6 Votes (Like | Disagree)

Flight Plan

10 months ago

Netflix would be terrible for Warner. And Warner would be terrible for Netflix, too. Both are losing viewership and Warner is also losing READERSHIP in its failing print businesses.

But trying to keep all those Warner properties...no, I think it would be a debacle similar to other huge acquisitions over the years, such as AOL's acquisition of Time Warner, Sears buying K-Mart (or was it the other way around? Either way, it was terrible for both), or the famous "merger of equals" Daimler and Chrysler.

All of those deals, and dozens more, were real stinkers that hurt consumers, the companies, the employees, and the taxpayers who always seem to be footing some guilded deal or another.

If the Netflix deal goes through, what are the chances Apple buys Disney?

I thought Paramount was going to make its own offer directly to the Warner stockholders. And it sounded like Paramount wanted to offer more than Netflix would have.

Disney, for its part, isn't fit for purchase by anybody....at least not in its current form. There are too many issues of toxic nature that have chased the customer base away from all of its properties, whether they are media or theme park related.

And don't forget, we are in the middle of a population crash throughout North America, the UK, and Europe. This will impact Disney for the worse because it has so much supposedly kid-centric IP throughout the enterprise. For anybody to want to buy Disney, they'd probably need to unload underperforming properties and IP, either right before or soon after any acquisition or merger involving Disney. Unless Disney can turn things around in the core businesses. But there's no evidence that leadership is either interested in or capable of doing the hard work of turning that battleship away from the fast-approaching sandbar.

Score: 5 Votes (Like | Disagree)