During the 2024 presidential election, @KamalaHQ was something of an alter ego for Vice President Kamala Harris — as Harris ran a buttoned-up campaign, the online accounts shared clips of her set to viral TikTok sounds, shitposted unflattering pictures of Donald Trump, and adopted a voice that was at times indistinguishable from the average 20-something posting about politics on X. It was an effective way to rack up likes, engagement, and explainers, but it did not stop Trump from winning a second term.
The same people who ran @KamalaHQ announced last week that they were reviving the accounts and rebranding as Headquarters, described in various places as a “Gen Z content hub,” a “newsroom,” and “an online media brand.” Headquarters launched on platforms including Instagram, TikTok, X, Substack, and Facebook, where so far it has largely shared clips of breaking news moments: Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl halftime show performance, for example, or of lawmakers grilling Trump administration officials about Jeffrey Epstein. (Its first handle on X, @headquarters_67, was derided by some; the account later changed its handle to @headquarters_68, and is now @HQNewsNow.) The Instagram account has already co-posted content with the locally focused Courier Newsroom, a similar left-leaning media brand that is expanding across the US.
The effort is a response to the reality that the right has spent years building up a content machine that now has a hold on the highest levels of the Trump administration, which itself is filled with podcasters, trolls, and internet agitators. By repurposing social media handles with millions of followers and an established voice, Headquarters is looking to flood the zone with unabashedly liberal, anti-Trump content. Some of the responses to Headquarters boiled down to “This is cringe.” Many questioned whether a content hub was enough of a response to the lawlessness of the second Trump administration. Others, of course, were happy to see the memes.
I spoke with Lauren Kapp and Parker Butler, managing partners at Luminary Strategies, and Arlie Shugaar, director of platforms at People for the American Way (PFA), part of the team running Headquarters, about their plan to counter the right-wing content machine.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
The Verge: This idea of repurposing a campaign social media account is definitely novel. How should voters and audiences understand the account? Is it an extension of the Democratic Party? Should they think of it as a third-party content creator/influencer account? Is it an extension of Kamala Harris as a politician?
Parker Butler: I would think of it as a news and commentary resource with an obviously progressive lens. The vice president does not have editorial control over the content. The accounts are repurposed, so they are not the vice president’s campaign accounts. They are an entirely new brand with a different purpose. Central to that is the recognition that an account like this with 8 million-plus followers across platforms can have an enormous impact across not just one election, but many elections, many causes, and I think that’s particularly important as we head into 2026.
How were you thinking about what to do with the account after the election?
Lauren Kapp: We saw this as a huge missed opportunity if we did not repurpose it. There was such a surge in [followers] after the ticket transition in July 2024. And while the Kamala HQ account is known for its memes and trends, we had an entire clipping apparatus that was embedded in the KHQ team and we’re really ramping that up. We’re going to be creating very similar styles of content that we were on the campaign, but also you’ll continue to see a lot of direct-to-camera videos of our staffers. The entire clipping apparatus is getting restarted again as well too, and just really holding this current administration accountable on a day-to-day basis.
How many people are working on the account on a given day?
LK: On a daily basis, there’s between eight to 12 of us who are supporting Arlie. The project is housed under People for the American Way, and Arlie is going to be building up a team. Then you have [Harris’] team, who is kind of serving as an advisory position through PFA, and then Luminary Strategies, who is our firm that’s providing the initial support for this project.
The goal is basically to find and create new talent and to create a talent pipeline through People for the American Way, given the fact that Democrats are very behind in digital at large. This account was something that I think a lot of young people found exciting during 2024, and by rebranding it, we’re hoping to have a lot of new folks that can be involved in this account in different capacities.
Talk about the sort of pipeline a little bit. Is it similar to the right’s Turning Point USA contributors, where there’s a central organization and then there are people who are on message or under the same umbrella of values and ideologies, who are then creating their own content for their own platforms?
PB: It’s a mix. Part of this is building up the talent pipeline from a staffer perspective, getting folks more in the left-leaning space who understand digital. There’s so much focus on policy and research and a more brainiac style of staffer types in the Democratic space, but there’s less of an emphasis on digital-first, online-first strategy. We want to show young people that this is a viable career path to do this sort of thing.
We’re also working with front-facing creators as well. The name of Headquarters speaks to what we want to be, which is sort of a nexus in the space. The right is this machine that is constantly putting out stuff in a coordinated way. The left feels often a lot more disparate and disconnected. We want to be that hub for a lot of folks. Whether you’re a creator or you run a page, you can feel like, “I’m being uplifted by Headquarters, I’m collaborating with them and they’re helping to grow my presence.”
“At large, the strategy has to be first and fast.”
There was the Wired story last year about a similar political group that was working with content creators to teach them how to shoot video or edit online content. Some people felt misled because they didn’t realize it was a coordinated thing. Do you worry about that type of reaction?
PB: There is an element of this program that involves collaborating with creators. It’s not like a paid operation. The point of this is to audience-build with creators. That’s one piece of this program, but another piece of it is really the owned social piece — building up these pages and putting out content from Headquarters itself. The emphasis is less on sort of coordinated creator messaging.
What does it take to get attention online in the current media ecosystem? What formats work? What tone have you landed on? What do you see doing well on social?
LK: At large, the strategy has to be first and fast. I don’t think a lot of left-leaning groups have the apparatus set up to be able to post online quickly. There’s a lot of layers of approvals that prevent people from being able to drive narratives, which often leaves people to be reactive versus proactive. [On the campaign] we had a very quick approval process where it took, barring objection, five minutes, and we are following that model because it worked during the campaign.
Arlie Shugaar: We have always split up our content strategy based on platform, but the one thing that we see really perform well across all platforms are clips. I think people really want to decide for themselves and see it straight from the source, so that’s huge for us.
Is there anything that you want to do differently with headquarters than how you did things with Kamala HQ?
AS: One of the main pieces of feedback and learnings from 2024 was that it was too trendy or too geared towards certain demographics. I’m really interested in expanding that reach and not just in a way of using different trends that might be on another side of the internet, but in a really intentional and thoughtful way that speaks to folks where they’re at and just make sense and make sure that they’re involved in the conversation.
Will Headquarters take policy positions? Will you endorse candidates?
LK: The big three for us right now are definitely Epstein, ICE, and the economy because that’s really what’s driving conversation right now and we’ll continue to churn out content on that.
I’m curious if you feel tied or burdened by the Harris/Walz agenda. Do you feel like people will associate Headquarters specifically with some of the stances or policy positions of the campaign?
PB: It’s not like we’re putting out a very specific policy. We’re not running for office. Again, this is an account that’s meant to educate people broadly about progressive issues. We are primarily a values-based account, so it’s less of a “Here’s our specific prescription of this particular policy on this particular issue,” but it’s more about “These are our values and this is the information that you need to be armed with to come to an educated conclusion and to get activated in this space.”
We trust folks to come to their own conclusions and come to their own opinions about things. This isn’t meant to be propagandizing. We are branding it as a newsroom because we want it to be information first and less of telling people exactly what to believe.
LK: There were so many criticisms about how we lost the election online, how we didn’t go on enough podcasts, we didn’t do this, we didn’t do that, and the vice president heard that and she’s taking a direct action to try to create something within the progressive ecosystem online. I personally see this as a huge investment in the space. By no means are we saying that this is going to fix everything, but this is a small step forward in the right direction.
[Asked in a follow-up email whether Headquarters would share content related to Palestine — an issue that haunted the Harris campaign and Joe Biden presidency — Butler said, “Our mission is to hold Trump and MAGA accountable on issues where they are out of step with Americans — no issue is off the table for us to talk about in that regard.”]
How do you plan to work around the fact that there are Democratic candidates around the country that aren’t totally aligned with the party? I’m thinking, like, congressional candidate Kat Abughazaleh in Illinois. Would Headquarters feel comfortable posting videos of her? Would Headquarters post a video about abolishing ICE? I’m just so curious about where you stand, really.
PB: Yeah, I mean, again, that goes to what I was mentioning earlier about how we see Headquarters being a nexus of the broader space. We believe very strongly that in order to defeat fascism, we need to be a big tent. Obviously there’s different factions within the party and there’s plenty of discourse to go around on which sort of faction is better or what have you, but at the end of the day, we want to uplift the folks in the left-leaning space broadly. So absolutely, especially as we get closer to the general election and these primaries take place after that, I think we want to uplift everyone across the space because ultimately this is a very dire moment for our democracy, and so we want to make sure that the coalition to defeat MAGA is as big as possible.
There was a Headquarters launch campaign on X and other platforms. Elon Musk didn’t buy Twitter to destroy it; he bought it to remake something in his image according to his political leanings. There’s obviously issues, like the AI deepfakes. Substack has its own issues with Nazi newsletters and content that’s monetized. I’m curious if you believe you need to be on these platforms.
AS: I think that being on these platforms is pretty essential to reach the folks that are on there just getting their regular content and scrolling. We’re interested in going wherever is putting us in contact with folks that want to be reached. We had a Truth Social back in 2024, and I think we are definitely interested in going to these places where even if just one post can educate and reframe what’s happening in the conversation for people, we’re interested in doing that.
Is Headquarters on Truth Social?
PB: We are reaching out to the reps to change the username, but yes, we will have an account there.
I think part of the reason why the right has so thoroughly dominated some of these spaces is that Elon Musk literally bought Twitter to do that, right? X has this effect of taking whatever issue Musk cares about at the moment and creating news out of it. How do you balance being active on a platform or stop posting there so that it doesn’t legitimize or normalize a far-right platform?
PB: Billionaires are buying hip social media platforms because they know that social media is ground zero for where these narratives originate. And so it would be foolish for Democrats or those on the left to see that and to say, “Okay, right-wing billionaires are doing this, so now we’re going to recede and move backward.” What we need to do is move forward and get in the game. We have to fight back. We need to invest ourselves in social media. So that’s a big part of the idea behind Headquarters is, we’ll go anywhere because the kind of voters that we have to win over and win back are exactly the type of people who may scroll on X or they might listen to a podcaster that most people on the left don’t listen to. And so we want to go everywhere.
How will you know if you’re successful?
PB: This sounds broad, but if we are able to shift the cultural tide against MAGA. There was so much conversation last year around young people moving to the right. They voted for Trump in larger numbers and that was in large part due to cultural shifts and what was seen as cool, what was seen as where to head. We want to reverse that and we want to show people that there’s a much better way.
AS: I think generally we will know if we’re successful by making sure that we’re building on the platforms, the huge platforms that we’ve already amassed, and making sure that we can keep growing those platforms and give people a sizable place to amplify their message and just get all the information out there.
So looking at followers and engagement on the platforms?
[After our conversation, Luminary Strategies shared some initial figures at the end of Headquarters’ first week back: It had racked up 160 million “views” across platforms, added 300,000 new followers, and its posts were shared more than half a million times, the firm said.]
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![Who is John Ternus, the incoming Apple CEO? | TechCrunch
After 15 years, Tim Cook will hand off the Apple CEO role to John Ternus, the company’s senior vice president of hardware engineering. Starting on September 1, Ternus will lead one of the world’s most valuable companies, but if you’re not a dedicated Apple enthusiast, you’ve probably never heard of this man, who has largely remained out of the spotlight until now.
How long has John Ternus worked at Apple?
Ternus has worked at Apple for nearly half of his life — now 51 years old, he has been with the company for 25 years.
He joined Apple’s product design team in 2001 as only his second job out of college (his first was at a small maker of virtual-reality devices called Virtual Research Systems). By 2013, Ternus was a VP of hardware engineering and was promoted to the SVP role in 2021.
Ternus — who is 15 years younger than Cook — was among the youngest of top Apple executives who had been rumored as a possible successor, implying that Apple could be looking for someone to lead the company for a long time. After all, Apple has only had two CEOs in this millennium, so it seems that leadership continuity is important to the company.
Ternus reports to Cook, who he considers a mentor, and leads all of hardware engineering at Apple. That’s a pretty big deal for a company that’s known for ubiquitous hardware like the iPhone and the MacBook.
In his 2024 commencement speech at his alma mater, the University of Pennsylvania’s engineering school, Ternus reflected on the lessons he learned at Apple, which perhaps can tell us a bit about his character — or at least a sanitized version of it.
“Always assume you’re as smart as anyone else in the room, but never assume that you know as much as they do,” Ternus said in the speech. “With this mindset, you’ll find the confidence you need to push forward, but more importantly, the humility to ask questions.”
Techcrunch event
San Francisco, CA
|
October 13-15, 2026
In a tech ecosystem populated with abrasive egos, it’s refreshing to hear Ternus utter the word “humility.” Better yet, he doesn’t appear to have an X account.
Image Credits:Apple
What projects did John Ternus lead at Apple?
Ternus’ earliest project at Apple involved scrutinizing parts for the Apple Cinema Display, an early desktop monitor.
“At some point in my first year, I found myself at a supplier facility. I was far away from home. Well past midnight, I was using a magnifying glass to count the number of grooves on the head of a screw … and I was arguing with the supplier because these parts had 35 grooves. They were supposed to have 25,” Ternus recalled in his commencement speech. “I distinctly remember stepping back for a minute and thinking, ‘What the hell am I doing? Is this normal?’”
As Ternus climbed the corporate ladder, his responsibilities grew. He may no longer spend as much time analyzing screws, but he still seems to take pride in getting the little details right. In a recent interview, when Ternus was asked about his favorite memory of Steve Jobs, he mentioned the former Apple co-founder’s attention to craftsmanship.
“[Jobs] was moving a piece of furniture, a chest of drawers, and pulled it away from the wall and looked at the back and was just reflecting on, you know, that the carpenter who made it had made it beautiful,” Ternus said. “It finished the back as beautifully as the rest of it, even though nobody was going to see it, right? And I think about that all the time because I think that perfectly exemplifies what we do here.”
From there, he went on to lead the hardware development behind products across the Apple ecosystem, overseeing launches like AirPods, Apple Watch, and the Vision Pro. He also had a hand in major technical upgrades at Apple, like Apple’s transition from Intel chips to its own proprietary Apple silicon.
Most recently, Ternus was involved in the production of the MacBook Neo, Apple’s new, more affordable laptop model that lowers costs through some clever trade-offs in hardware design, like using an iPhone chip to power the device.
“We never want to ship junk. We want to ship great products that have that Apple experience, that Apple quality. To do that with the Neo required building something completely new from the ground up … leveraging both the technologies we’d been developing like Apple silicon, but also the kind of expertise that we’ve developed over many, many years of building Macs, and building phones, and building iPads, and all of these things,” Ternus told Tom’s Guide.
As CEO, Ternus will have to steer Apple through its challenge to catch up in the AI race and figure out what to do with the underlying tech behind the Vision Pro.
What else do we know about John Ternus?
Ternus was on the swim team at Penn. For his senior project, he built a feeding arm that people with quadriplegia could control with head movements.
According to public records of political donations, Ternus donated ,900 to Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY) in 2021.
Otherwise, Ternus has maintained a relatively low profile.
#John #Ternus #incoming #Apple #CEO #TechCrunchApple,ceo,John Ternus,Tim Cook](https://techcrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/Apple-John-Ternus-Tim-Cook_Full-Bleed-Image.jpg.xlarge_2x.jpg?w=680 "Who is John Ternus, the incoming Apple CEO? | TechCrunch
After 15 years, Tim Cook will hand off the Apple CEO role to John Ternus, the company’s senior vice president of hardware engineering. Starting on September 1, Ternus will lead one of the world’s most valuable companies, but if you’re not a dedicated Apple enthusiast, you’ve probably never heard of this man, who has largely remained out of the spotlight until now.
How long has John Ternus worked at Apple?
Ternus has worked at Apple for nearly half of his life — now 51 years old, he has been with the company for 25 years.
He joined Apple’s product design team in 2001 as only his second job out of college (his first was at a small maker of virtual-reality devices called Virtual Research Systems). By 2013, Ternus was a VP of hardware engineering and was promoted to the SVP role in 2021.
Ternus — who is 15 years younger than Cook — was among the youngest of top Apple executives who had been rumored as a possible successor, implying that Apple could be looking for someone to lead the company for a long time. After all, Apple has only had two CEOs in this millennium, so it seems that leadership continuity is important to the company.
Ternus reports to Cook, who he considers a mentor, and leads all of hardware engineering at Apple. That’s a pretty big deal for a company that’s known for ubiquitous hardware like the iPhone and the MacBook.
In his 2024 commencement speech at his alma mater, the University of Pennsylvania’s engineering school, Ternus reflected on the lessons he learned at Apple, which perhaps can tell us a bit about his character — or at least a sanitized version of it.
“Always assume you’re as smart as anyone else in the room, but never assume that you know as much as they do,” Ternus said in the speech. “With this mindset, you’ll find the confidence you need to push forward, but more importantly, the humility to ask questions.”
Techcrunch event
San Francisco, CA
|
October 13-15, 2026
In a tech ecosystem populated with abrasive egos, it’s refreshing to hear Ternus utter the word “humility.” Better yet, he doesn’t appear to have an X account.
Image Credits:Apple
What projects did John Ternus lead at Apple?
Ternus’ earliest project at Apple involved scrutinizing parts for the Apple Cinema Display, an early desktop monitor.
“At some point in my first year, I found myself at a supplier facility. I was far away from home. Well past midnight, I was using a magnifying glass to count the number of grooves on the head of a screw … and I was arguing with the supplier because these parts had 35 grooves. They were supposed to have 25,” Ternus recalled in his commencement speech. “I distinctly remember stepping back for a minute and thinking, ‘What the hell am I doing? Is this normal?’”
As Ternus climbed the corporate ladder, his responsibilities grew. He may no longer spend as much time analyzing screws, but he still seems to take pride in getting the little details right. In a recent interview, when Ternus was asked about his favorite memory of Steve Jobs, he mentioned the former Apple co-founder’s attention to craftsmanship.
“[Jobs] was moving a piece of furniture, a chest of drawers, and pulled it away from the wall and looked at the back and was just reflecting on, you know, that the carpenter who made it had made it beautiful,” Ternus said. “It finished the back as beautifully as the rest of it, even though nobody was going to see it, right? And I think about that all the time because I think that perfectly exemplifies what we do here.”
From there, he went on to lead the hardware development behind products across the Apple ecosystem, overseeing launches like AirPods, Apple Watch, and the Vision Pro. He also had a hand in major technical upgrades at Apple, like Apple’s transition from Intel chips to its own proprietary Apple silicon.
Most recently, Ternus was involved in the production of the MacBook Neo, Apple’s new, more affordable laptop model that lowers costs through some clever trade-offs in hardware design, like using an iPhone chip to power the device.
“We never want to ship junk. We want to ship great products that have that Apple experience, that Apple quality. To do that with the Neo required building something completely new from the ground up … leveraging both the technologies we’d been developing like Apple silicon, but also the kind of expertise that we’ve developed over many, many years of building Macs, and building phones, and building iPads, and all of these things,” Ternus told Tom’s Guide.
As CEO, Ternus will have to steer Apple through its challenge to catch up in the AI race and figure out what to do with the underlying tech behind the Vision Pro.
What else do we know about John Ternus?
Ternus was on the swim team at Penn. For his senior project, he built a feeding arm that people with quadriplegia could control with head movements.
According to public records of political donations, Ternus donated ,900 to Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY) in 2021.
Otherwise, Ternus has maintained a relatively low profile.
#John #Ternus #incoming #Apple #CEO #TechCrunchApple,ceo,John Ternus,Tim Cook")
![Who is John Ternus, the incoming Apple CEO? | TechCrunch
After 15 years, Tim Cook will hand off the Apple CEO role to John Ternus, the company’s senior vice president of hardware engineering. Starting on September 1, Ternus will lead one of the world’s most valuable companies, but if you’re not a dedicated Apple enthusiast, you’ve probably never heard of this man, who has largely remained out of the spotlight until now.
How long has John Ternus worked at Apple?
Ternus has worked at Apple for nearly half of his life — now 51 years old, he has been with the company for 25 years.
He joined Apple’s product design team in 2001 as only his second job out of college (his first was at a small maker of virtual-reality devices called Virtual Research Systems). By 2013, Ternus was a VP of hardware engineering and was promoted to the SVP role in 2021.
Ternus — who is 15 years younger than Cook — was among the youngest of top Apple executives who had been rumored as a possible successor, implying that Apple could be looking for someone to lead the company for a long time. After all, Apple has only had two CEOs in this millennium, so it seems that leadership continuity is important to the company.
Ternus reports to Cook, who he considers a mentor, and leads all of hardware engineering at Apple. That’s a pretty big deal for a company that’s known for ubiquitous hardware like the iPhone and the MacBook.
In his 2024 commencement speech at his alma mater, the University of Pennsylvania’s engineering school, Ternus reflected on the lessons he learned at Apple, which perhaps can tell us a bit about his character — or at least a sanitized version of it.
“Always assume you’re as smart as anyone else in the room, but never assume that you know as much as they do,” Ternus said in the speech. “With this mindset, you’ll find the confidence you need to push forward, but more importantly, the humility to ask questions.”
Techcrunch event
San Francisco, CA
|
October 13-15, 2026
In a tech ecosystem populated with abrasive egos, it’s refreshing to hear Ternus utter the word “humility.” Better yet, he doesn’t appear to have an X account.
Image Credits:Apple
What projects did John Ternus lead at Apple?
Ternus’ earliest project at Apple involved scrutinizing parts for the Apple Cinema Display, an early desktop monitor.
“At some point in my first year, I found myself at a supplier facility. I was far away from home. Well past midnight, I was using a magnifying glass to count the number of grooves on the head of a screw … and I was arguing with the supplier because these parts had 35 grooves. They were supposed to have 25,” Ternus recalled in his commencement speech. “I distinctly remember stepping back for a minute and thinking, ‘What the hell am I doing? Is this normal?’”
As Ternus climbed the corporate ladder, his responsibilities grew. He may no longer spend as much time analyzing screws, but he still seems to take pride in getting the little details right. In a recent interview, when Ternus was asked about his favorite memory of Steve Jobs, he mentioned the former Apple co-founder’s attention to craftsmanship.
“[Jobs] was moving a piece of furniture, a chest of drawers, and pulled it away from the wall and looked at the back and was just reflecting on, you know, that the carpenter who made it had made it beautiful,” Ternus said. “It finished the back as beautifully as the rest of it, even though nobody was going to see it, right? And I think about that all the time because I think that perfectly exemplifies what we do here.”
From there, he went on to lead the hardware development behind products across the Apple ecosystem, overseeing launches like AirPods, Apple Watch, and the Vision Pro. He also had a hand in major technical upgrades at Apple, like Apple’s transition from Intel chips to its own proprietary Apple silicon.
Most recently, Ternus was involved in the production of the MacBook Neo, Apple’s new, more affordable laptop model that lowers costs through some clever trade-offs in hardware design, like using an iPhone chip to power the device.
“We never want to ship junk. We want to ship great products that have that Apple experience, that Apple quality. To do that with the Neo required building something completely new from the ground up … leveraging both the technologies we’d been developing like Apple silicon, but also the kind of expertise that we’ve developed over many, many years of building Macs, and building phones, and building iPads, and all of these things,” Ternus told Tom’s Guide.
As CEO, Ternus will have to steer Apple through its challenge to catch up in the AI race and figure out what to do with the underlying tech behind the Vision Pro.
What else do we know about John Ternus?
Ternus was on the swim team at Penn. For his senior project, he built a feeding arm that people with quadriplegia could control with head movements.
According to public records of political donations, Ternus donated ,900 to Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY) in 2021.
Otherwise, Ternus has maintained a relatively low profile.
#John #Ternus #incoming #Apple #CEO #TechCrunchApple,ceo,John Ternus,Tim Cook](https://i2.wp.com/techcrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/Apple-John-Ternus-Tim-Cook_Full-Bleed-Image.jpg.xlarge_2x.jpg?w=680&ssl=1 "Who is John Ternus, the incoming Apple CEO? | TechCrunch
After 15 years, Tim Cook will hand off the Apple CEO role to John Ternus, the company’s senior vice president of hardware engineering. Starting on September 1, Ternus will lead one of the world’s most valuable companies, but if you’re not a dedicated Apple enthusiast, you’ve probably never heard of this man, who has largely remained out of the spotlight until now.
How long has John Ternus worked at Apple?
Ternus has worked at Apple for nearly half of his life — now 51 years old, he has been with the company for 25 years.
He joined Apple’s product design team in 2001 as only his second job out of college (his first was at a small maker of virtual-reality devices called Virtual Research Systems). By 2013, Ternus was a VP of hardware engineering and was promoted to the SVP role in 2021.
Ternus — who is 15 years younger than Cook — was among the youngest of top Apple executives who had been rumored as a possible successor, implying that Apple could be looking for someone to lead the company for a long time. After all, Apple has only had two CEOs in this millennium, so it seems that leadership continuity is important to the company.
Ternus reports to Cook, who he considers a mentor, and leads all of hardware engineering at Apple. That’s a pretty big deal for a company that’s known for ubiquitous hardware like the iPhone and the MacBook.
In his 2024 commencement speech at his alma mater, the University of Pennsylvania’s engineering school, Ternus reflected on the lessons he learned at Apple, which perhaps can tell us a bit about his character — or at least a sanitized version of it.
“Always assume you’re as smart as anyone else in the room, but never assume that you know as much as they do,” Ternus said in the speech. “With this mindset, you’ll find the confidence you need to push forward, but more importantly, the humility to ask questions.”
Techcrunch event
San Francisco, CA
|
October 13-15, 2026
In a tech ecosystem populated with abrasive egos, it’s refreshing to hear Ternus utter the word “humility.” Better yet, he doesn’t appear to have an X account.
Image Credits:Apple
What projects did John Ternus lead at Apple?
Ternus’ earliest project at Apple involved scrutinizing parts for the Apple Cinema Display, an early desktop monitor.
“At some point in my first year, I found myself at a supplier facility. I was far away from home. Well past midnight, I was using a magnifying glass to count the number of grooves on the head of a screw … and I was arguing with the supplier because these parts had 35 grooves. They were supposed to have 25,” Ternus recalled in his commencement speech. “I distinctly remember stepping back for a minute and thinking, ‘What the hell am I doing? Is this normal?’”
As Ternus climbed the corporate ladder, his responsibilities grew. He may no longer spend as much time analyzing screws, but he still seems to take pride in getting the little details right. In a recent interview, when Ternus was asked about his favorite memory of Steve Jobs, he mentioned the former Apple co-founder’s attention to craftsmanship.
“[Jobs] was moving a piece of furniture, a chest of drawers, and pulled it away from the wall and looked at the back and was just reflecting on, you know, that the carpenter who made it had made it beautiful,” Ternus said. “It finished the back as beautifully as the rest of it, even though nobody was going to see it, right? And I think about that all the time because I think that perfectly exemplifies what we do here.”
From there, he went on to lead the hardware development behind products across the Apple ecosystem, overseeing launches like AirPods, Apple Watch, and the Vision Pro. He also had a hand in major technical upgrades at Apple, like Apple’s transition from Intel chips to its own proprietary Apple silicon.
Most recently, Ternus was involved in the production of the MacBook Neo, Apple’s new, more affordable laptop model that lowers costs through some clever trade-offs in hardware design, like using an iPhone chip to power the device.
“We never want to ship junk. We want to ship great products that have that Apple experience, that Apple quality. To do that with the Neo required building something completely new from the ground up … leveraging both the technologies we’d been developing like Apple silicon, but also the kind of expertise that we’ve developed over many, many years of building Macs, and building phones, and building iPads, and all of these things,” Ternus told Tom’s Guide.
As CEO, Ternus will have to steer Apple through its challenge to catch up in the AI race and figure out what to do with the underlying tech behind the Vision Pro.
What else do we know about John Ternus?
Ternus was on the swim team at Penn. For his senior project, he built a feeding arm that people with quadriplegia could control with head movements.
According to public records of political donations, Ternus donated ,900 to Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY) in 2021.
Otherwise, Ternus has maintained a relatively low profile.
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