Apple Separates Human Resources Role From Retail, Adds New Chief People Officer

Apple is hiring Carol Surface as its new chief people officer, with Surface set to report directly to Apple CEO Tim Cook, reports Bloomberg. Apple head of retail Deirdre O'Brien had been handling the "people" role, but Apple has now made a dedicated hire and has removed the duties from O'Brien.

apple employees trio
While O'Brien will continue to be Apple's retail chief, Surface will lead the People team, which is known as Human Resources at most companies. That team at Apple is designed to help Apple connect with and care for its employees, handling talent development, recruiting, employee relations, benefits, compensation, inclusion and diversity, Apple University, and more.

Apple is hiring Surface from Medtronic, where she currently serves as Chief Human Resources Officer. She has been with Medtronic for over nine years, and also worked at Best Buy and Pepsi. Surface is set to start at Apple in March.

Note: Due to the political or social nature of the discussion regarding this topic, the discussion thread is located in our Political News forum. All forum members and site visitors are welcome to read and follow the thread, but posting is limited to forum members with at least 100 posts.

Popular Stories

iphone 17 air iphone 16 pro

iPhone 17 Air USB-C Port May Have This Unusual Design Quirk

Wednesday April 30, 2025 3:59 am PDT by
Apple is preparing to launch a dramatically thinner iPhone this September, and if recent leaks are anything to go by, the so-called iPhone 17 Air could boast one of the most radical design shifts in recent years. iPhone 17 Air dummy model alongside iPhone 16 Pro (credit: AppleTrack) At just 5.5mm thick (excluding a slightly raised camera bump), the 6.6-inch iPhone 17 Air is expected to become ...
iphone 16 display

iPhone 17's Scratch Resistant Anti-Reflective Display Coating Canceled

Monday April 28, 2025 12:48 pm PDT by
Apple may have canceled the super scratch resistant anti-reflective display coating that it planned to use for the iPhone 17 Pro models, according to a source with reliable information that spoke to MacRumors. Last spring, Weibo leaker Instant Digital suggested Apple was working on a new anti-reflective display layer that was more scratch resistant than the Ceramic Shield. We haven't heard...
AirPods Pro 3 Mock Feature

AirPods Pro 3 Just Months Away – Here's What We Know

Tuesday April 29, 2025 1:30 am PDT by
Despite being more than two years old, Apple's AirPods Pro 2 still dominate the premium wireless‑earbud space, thanks to a potent mix of top‑tier audio, class‑leading noise cancellation, and Apple's habit of delivering major new features through software updates. With AirPods Pro 3 widely expected to arrive in 2025, prospective buyers now face a familiar dilemma: snap up the proven...
iPhone 17 Air Pastel Feature

iPhone 17 Reaches Key Milestone Ahead of Mass Production

Monday April 28, 2025 8:44 am PDT by
Apple has completed Engineering Validation Testing (EVT) for at least one iPhone 17 model, according to a paywalled preview of an upcoming DigiTimes report. iPhone 17 Air mockup based on rumored design The EVT stage involves Apple testing iPhone 17 prototypes to ensure the hardware works as expected. There are still DVT (Design Validation Test) and PVT (Production Validation Test) stages to...
apple watch ultra yellow

What's Next for the Apple Watch Ultra 3 and Apple Watch SE 3

Friday April 25, 2025 2:44 pm PDT by
This week marks the 10th anniversary of the Apple Watch, which launched on April 24, 2015. Yesterday, we recapped features rumored for the Apple Watch Series 11, but since 2015, the Apple Watch has also branched out into the Apple Watch Ultra and the Apple Watch SE, so we thought we'd take a look at what's next for those product lines, too. 2025 Apple Watch Ultra 3 Apple didn't update the...
iPhone 17 Pro on Desk Feature

All iPhone 17 Models Again Rumored to Feature 12GB of RAM

Tuesday April 29, 2025 3:36 am PDT by
All upcoming iPhone 17 models will come equipped with 12GB of RAM to support Apple Intelligence, according to the Weibo-based leaker Digital Chat Station. The claim from the Chinese leaker, who has sources within Apple's supply chain, comes a few days after industry analyst Ming-Chi Kuo said that the iPhone 17 Air, iPhone 17 Pro, and iPhone 17 Pro Max will all be equipped with 12GB of RAM. ...
iOS App Store General Feature JoeBlue

Epic Games Wins Major Victory as Apple is Ordered to Comply With App Store Anti-Steering Injunction [Updated]

Wednesday April 30, 2025 4:01 pm PDT by
In a victory for Epic Games, Apple was today found to be in violation of a 2021 injunction that required it to allow developers to direct customers to third-party purchase options on the web using in-app links. Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers, who has been handling the Apple vs. Epic Games dispute for the last five years, said that Apple is in "willful violation" of the injunction she issued to ...
iphone 16 pro ghost hand

iPhone 18 to Use High Performance Six-Channel Memory, Claims Leaker

Tuesday April 29, 2025 7:00 am PDT by
Apple's iPhone 18 lineup will introduce a major leap in memory performance, according to new information shared today by Weibo-based leaker Digital Chat Station. Apple is reportedly planning to equip the 2026 models with a high-capacity six-channel LPDDR5X memory configuration, significantly upping the memory bandwidth for future AI features and multitasking. Expanding the memory bandwidth...

Top Rated Comments

DTphonehome Avatar
29 months ago
In response, Microsoft has hired Carl iPad as Head of Persons.
Score: 55 Votes (Like | Disagree)
Todd Fisher Avatar
29 months ago

We can still use the word “Chief”? Just askin
Within 5 years, the term "People" will probably be offensive to some folks lol.
Score: 29 Votes (Like | Disagree)
genzai Avatar
29 months ago

Nope. It's racist to use the word if it's not related to indigenous groups - English has other perfectly good words to use. Derogatory is in the eye of the beholders too. In this case, it's low key appropriation. Chief isn't meant to be used in a business sense - it has a reeeeeal specific meaning to the people the word was taken from. And when I say 'taken', I mean 'murdered'. This is why it's just the done thing now not to use the language. Apple are dumb.
Very sad to see comments like this. Is this some sort of knee jerk response?
1) This is not a Native American word. So far as I know it has not even been adopted widely into Native American languages. The word has etymology in Latin and French and had been in use in the English language for at least 200 years before English speakers arrived in the americas.

2) You know there is a related adverb as well, "chiefly"- how does that fit into your linguistic view?

3) If anything, it could be racist to use it /IN/ a Native American contexts. For instance, it would be wildly inappropriate to call a Native American person you just met (or even knew well) "Hey, Chief..." Just as it would be very suspicious to say "hey, Jew" or "hey Sheik" - It's not necessary (to call out one's ethnicity or culture) and it would be hard to envision a context in which that conveyed positive intentions. But at the same time, if Native American communities accept the use of the word "Chief" to describe tribal leaders, then that is an appropriate English word to use in that specific context.

4) It is without a doubt ok and advisable to continue to use the English word "chief" within all the original and ongoing definitions and meanings of the word- Such as in "Chief of Operations at...", or "CEO", or even "OK Chief" (to a boss figure). This has nothing to do with anything Native American or any ethnicity.

Ultimately, I really don't understand these lazy attacks on language. While many, many words can be used in a way that is intended to be purposefully hurtful or derogatory, far fewer are inherently so. It is really important to understand the etymology and all modern use cases of specific language. I consider myself very liberal minded, and I find this /specific/ type of "wokeness" really troubling. There are so many things (which often take real effort) that we could be doing to improve societal or systemic issues related to racial bias, and socio-economic disparities, but we have people who pat themselves on the back for things like "banning" non derogatory words. It creates distracting noise and a false sense of participation on the issues at hand- all energy and effort which could instead be doing actual good. I have a friend who tried to tell me the word "master" was banned. It's wild. Of course we shouldn't use that word in context of a "master-slave relationship", but this friend, whom I still love, really thought we could no longer say someone was a "master painter" or had "mastered a skill" or label a "master hard drive" in context of multiple copies- it is misguided and destructive and distracting. Look at all the time I wasted writing this thing -which I think should be pretty common sense! I could have been doing something much more useful and progressive with this time spent!

g\
Score: 25 Votes (Like | Disagree)
DelayedGratificationGene Avatar
29 months ago
We can still use the word “Chief”? Just askin
Score: 23 Votes (Like | Disagree)
cocky jeremy Avatar
29 months ago

We can still use the word “Chief”? Just askin
My 16th cousin is native american. This offends me.
Score: 15 Votes (Like | Disagree)
Attirex Avatar
29 months ago
aka union buster!
Score: 15 Votes (Like | Disagree)