Pathbreakers of Arab America—Anthony Michael (Tony) Fadell

posted on: Sep 24, 2025

By: John Mason / Arab America Contributing Writer

This is the ninety-fifth in Arab America’s series on American pathbreakers of Arab descent. The series features personalities from various fields, including entertainment, business, sports, science, the arts, academia, journalism, and politics. Our ninety-fifth pathbreaker is Tony Fadell, an active investor and entrepreneur with a thirty-plus year history of founding companies and designing products that profoundly improve people’s lives. He was born to a Lebanese Arab American father and a Polish American mother in Michigan.

Tony Fadell, fascinated with how things work since the age of four, is a devout advocate of learning by doing

Fadell one noted that he was fascinated with how things work since the age of four, when his maternal grandfather taught him how to take things apart — and put them back together. This learning by doing, by experience, Tony linked to Steve Jobs, another Arab American (his Syrian father kept that a secret). He said, “…this goes back to Steve Jobs’ thing — which is the way you open up your knowledge of the world is by discovering it and learning about it, not through books, but by being there.”

Born on March 22, 1969, in Michigan, Anthony Michael Fadell was the child of a Lebanese American father and a Polish American mother. His father was a successful sales executive with the Levi Strauss company, and the family moved frequently. Tony graduated from Grosse Pointe South High School. It is noted that he discovered computers at age 12 and worked as a caddy at a local golf club to raise money to buy his first Apple II. By the time he reached high school, he “dreamed of working with the team responsible for creating Apple’s Macintosh computer.”

At the University of Michigan, Fadell studied computer engineering while also building his own small business. In that endeavor, he developed constructive Instruments, producing multimedia composition software for children. Tony has continued his propensity for building things, now through his role as Principal at the Build Collective. This is an investment and advisory firm coaching deep tech startups. Between the time of his University training and the present, he has had a prosperous, inventive career in various sectors of the internet industry.

After college, Fadell worked for Apple spinoff General Magic for three years, working with Sony, Philips, Matsushita, Toshiba and other consumer electronics firms. Specifically, in 1995, Philips co-founded their Mobile Computing Group and appointed him as the chief technology officer and director of engineering.

Tony moved on after Philips in 1999 to start his own company, called Fuse, to develop the “Dell of Consumer Electronics.” Later, he moved to Apple, where he became known, literally, as the “father of the iPod.” Fadell is also known as the co-creator of the iPhone, having worked on the first three generations of the iPhone, including oversight of all iPhone hardware, firmware, and accessories development.

Fadell left Apple, a well-marked event duly recorded on November 3, 2008, by “The Wall Street Journal.” Since then, he has been involved in numerous entrepreneurial activities, typically through firms he has created around himself. For example, in 2010, he co-founded Nest Labs, which announced its first product, the Nest Learning Thermostat, in October 2011.

Google acquired Nest in January 2014 for $3.2 billion. Tony now has more than 300 patents and was named one of Time’s “100 Most Influential People in the World” in 2014. In 2016, Time named the Nest Learning Thermostat, the iPod, and the iPhone as three of the “50 Most Influential Gadgets of All Time”.

Fadell has been running a venture fund since 2017, originally called Future Shape, now called Build Collective. He is the author of “Build: An Unorthodox Guide to Making Things Worth Making.” The book was named a New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and USA Today best seller.

Tony has been involved in the redevelopment of what was known as Google ‘Glass.’ This was a product brand of smart glasses developed by Google’s X Development, with a mission of producing a ubiquitous computer. Google Glass displayed information to the wearer using a head-up display. Wearers communicated with the Internet via natural language voice commands. It was discontinued, then redesigned “from scratch” in 2019–with Fadell’s involvement. He has averred that his redesign would involve a complete overhaul of the device and will not release it until it’s perfected.

A matter aside from Tony’s enormous success as an innovator and entrepreneur is his identity as an Arab American. Though not a Muslim, Fadell is lumped with American Muslims in an article, “9 things that wouldn’t exist if America’s Muslim Ban were always around.” The article refers to Tony’s Lebanese background (which is Christian, not Muslim) in the context of his success in co-creating the iPod and iPhone, the latter with fellow Arab-American Steve Jobs.

The story of Steve Jobs’ Arab origin is that his biological father, Abdulfattah John Jandali, was a Syrian Muslim from Homs. His biological mother, Joanne Carole (Schieble), was an American of Swiss German descent. The two met in Wisconsin while Abdulfattah was attending school there. Because of family objections to the couple, they did not initially marry, and Steve was given up for adoption. His Muslim Arab origin was effectively erased.

In pursuit of frankness, it must be stated that Steve Jobs’ relationship with Fadell ultimately turned out poorly. Arab people, like any other ethnic group, do not always necessarily get along with each other. So, when Apple decided to move into the mobile phone sector, Jobs named Tony to lead the new project. “Efforts to add a phone to the architecture of the iPod failed, but when Fadell and his team reimagined the project as a mobile phone with a built-in iPod, they created another game-changing device, the iPhone.”

Fadell and his team at Apple were depicted as having “overturned the equilibrium of the consumer electronics industry and set Apple on the path to becoming the most highly capitalized company in history.” But, while Fadell was sometimes mentioned as a possible successor to Jobs, “their relationship was as turbulent as it was productive.” While their arguments were ‘intellectual,’ the personal friction between the pair led to impassioned arguments and repeated threats by Fadell to resign. In time, Tony’s growing family, and his wife’s career also at Apple, led to his and her resignation from in 2008. Fadell then took his family for a round-the-world tour, based in Paris, France, while completing an 18-month commitment as an advisor to Jobs.

Returning to the article about the Muslim ban, it argued that without immigration from Muslim-majority countries, advancements in U.S. technology, like the iPhone, wouldn’t have happened. This supports an argument that America is successful as a society because of its ethnic mix, not despite it.

Tony Faddell, preeminent “Coach” for America’s up-and-coming technology Braintrust

As Principal of “Build Collective,” Tony has been coaching over 200 startups innovating game-changing technologies. As the founder and former CEO of Nest, the company that pioneered the “Internet of Things,” and as head of Apple’s iPod Division, Fadell led the team that created the first 18 generations of the iPod and the first three generations of the iPhone. Tony’s coaching role is enhanced by his authorship of more than 300 patents.

As of 2019, Fadell has established a European network for his new enterprise, Future Shape, which has funded over 200 startups. It seems Tony is unstoppable, both in innovating new products for the internet market and in helping others to enhance their contribution to that market

Sources:
-“Anthony Michael Fadell,” Wikipedia Series on Arab Americans,
2025
-“Anthony Michael Fadell’s Biography.” Inventing the Future, 01/27/2025
-“Tony Faddell, Principal at Build Collective,” The Network
Search,2/13/2024
-“Google Glass ‘to Be Redesigned From Scratch’ — Born To Engineer, (including mention of Tony Fadell), 7/2019

John Mason, Ph.D., focuses on Arab culture, society, and history and is the author of LEFT-HANDED IN AN ISLAMIC WORLD: An Anthropologist’s Journey into the Middle East, New Academia Publishing, 2017. He has taught at the University of Libya in Benghazi, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in New York, and the American University in Cairo. John served with the United Nations in Tripoli, Libya, and consulted extensively on socioeconomic and political development for USAID and the World Bank in 65 countries.

The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the position of Arab America. The reproduction of this article is permissible with proper credit to Arab America and the author.

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