Deirdre O’Brien

After O’Brien steered Apple’s 500 retail stores and 165,000 employees through the worst of COVID, the company is trying to get things back to normal but faces some pushback. Corporate staffers have criticized Apple’s return-to-office plan, and some retail employees are organizing: An Apple store in Maryland voted to unionize in June, a company first. Still, O’Brien oversaw the opening of eight new Apple stores in the past year, from Wuhan to Abu Dhabi.