On Wednesday evening, the basement of the psychology building filled to capacity as Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak and his wife Janet Wozniak took the stage for “Well-being with Woz,” a conversation centered on mental health, happiness and the philosophy of a life well-lived.
The event was moderated by Cherrial Odell ’25, co-president of Stanford Mental Health Outreach and Wellness Buddies, and presented in partnership with Stanford Speakers Bureau, Stanford Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineering (IEEE) and the office of Substance Use Programs Education & Resources (SUPER).
Odell opened the evening by promoting the “Not Alone Challenge,” a mental health toolkit and social media campaign, before introducing the Wozniaks on a deeply personal note. She credited the Inspiring Children Foundation, a mental health program that the couple supports, with saving her life after she attempted suicide at 13 amid a struggle with depression and anxiety. “They kind of came into my life during some of the more deeply healing phases of my journey,” she told the audience.
Asked how he has maintained childlike wonder amid extraordinary success, Wozniak traced his outlook to his teenage years. He described falling in love with digital logic after discovering an engineering journal explaining how computers process ones and zeros, despite there being no books available in public libraries on the subject at the time.
Wozniak recalled being a shy kid who spent hours walking home from high school deliberately shaping who he wanted to be, committed to avoiding conflict and arguments. He pointed to two principles that have guided him ever since: a pacifist refusal to fight back when struck, and a commitment to responding with kindness even when others speak badly of him.
Music, he said, was foundational. Early Bob Dylan lyrics shaped his thinking, but it was the line “no good guy, no bad guy, only you and me, and we just disagree” in Dave Mason’s “We Just Disagree” that became a personal mantra for Wozniak.
Wozniak emphasized that he never chased money or industry-building ambitions. He recalled giving away roughly $10 million of his stock to about 80 Apple employees, including Dan Kottke, and selling pre-IPO shares to colleagues because he felt they deserved to be founders too. “I never sold out,” he said, contrasting himself with peers whose true selves he believes were “revealed” rather than being “changed” by sudden wealth.
Long before Apple, Wozniak told his father in sixth grade that he wanted to be “an electrical engineer first, fifth-grade teacher second.” After Apple, he made good on the second half of that promise, teaching fifth graders for eight years without press coverage. His advice on raising children echoed this independence. When his daughter, a nationally-ranked athlete accepted to Ivy League schools and Stanford, chose to attend UCLA, Wozniak said he was proud rather than disappointed. “That tells me what you care about,” he said, adding that he taught his children that learning mattered more than grades.
Janet Wozniak recounted their unconventional meeting on the “Geek Cruise,” where she taught Apple education classes to roughly 400 attendees. Steve attended her classes for two consecutive years, in the Caribbean and on the Mexican Riviera, asking notoriously hard questions but never speaking to her personally. “I couldn’t talk to her,” Steve admitted. “I didn’t even know her name.”
Eventually, Steve called the cruise organizer to track Janet down for a charity event at his home, where 10 children from New Jersey, most born around the time of Sept. 11, 2001 and dealing with significant medical or mental health challenges, were visiting through Make-A-Wish. Their wish had been Apple laptops, and the week-long visit became the foundation of Steve and Janet’s relationship.
“They say opposites attract, but they stay together because they have a common denominator,” Janet said. “Our common denominator was philosophy and values.”
The Wozniaks shared a string of stories that drew steady laughter. Janet recounted a recent prank Steve pulled pretending to have an asthma attack just weeks after she had been hospitalized for COVID-19 and asthma, though she noted that when she actually couldn’t breathe, Steve called 911 instantly despite their constant joking.
The couple married on Aug. 8, 2008 at 8:00 p.m. at a Segway polo world championship in Indianapolis, a sport Steve helped popularize with Apple coworkers who bought Segways and invented rules together as “The Silicon Valley Aftershocks.”
Midway through the event, Steve pulled out a pad of perforated two-dollar bills he prints from a high-quality printer that meets U.S. government specifications, making them legal tender. He estimated the Secret Service has been called about him at least four times, once even reading him his Miranda rights, but the bills have remained legal each time.
Asked what they would leave the audience with, both Wozniaks offered guidance rooted in authenticity.
“Be honest with yourself,” Steve said. “Don’t be what other people tell you you should be. You know it inside. Follow your heart.” He recalled following his own heart to the University of Colorado Boulder as a freshman, seeing snow for the first time in his life, despite being a shoo-in for MIT.
Janet, who described herself as a mathematician, computer scientist and biologist working in male-dominated fields, told students: “Do whatever it is that you wanna do, whatever you’re passionate about, because when you go to work, you’re gonna spend a lot of time working.” She added that loving what you do makes you better at it than anyone competing without that passion.
Steve closed with words of wisdom about standing out: “Try to be better. Do things differently. Look for what other people are not doing? What’s a different approach?… I don’t care what society says I should be.”
After the event, students lingered to discuss what they had heard. Felix Janos Horvath, a visiting student researcher at Stanford Medicine, called it a “really fun talk.”
“I thought they were both really sweet,” said attendee Joshua Gottschalk M.S. ’26. “I thought it was really interesting structurally, they didn’t really have a set agenda. He wanted to show who he was and show people that you can be super famous and popular and make a bunch of money, and you can still just be a good person.”