Tim Cook among those sought for advice on shaping education policies

White House officials have begun an outreach campaign to technology, business and education leaders including Apple CEO Tim cook and Laurene Powell Jobs (Steve Jobs’ widow) for advice on shaping funding approaches to science, technology, engineering and math education in U.S. public schools, reports Bloomberg.

Ivanka Trump, the President’s daughter, joined Reed Cordish, the president’s special assistant for technology initiatives, on a conference call with politicians, educators and CEOs to discuss STEM education, according to two people with knowledge of the call. According to Bloomberg, other participants on the roughly hour-long call included: Lockheed Martin CEO Marillyn Hewson; Accenture North America’s CEO Julie Sweet, Microsoft President Brad Smith; Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson and representatives from the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, Stanford, MIT and Broward County, Florida, Schools.

STEM is a curriculum based on the idea of educating students in four specific disciplines — science, technology, engineering and mathematics — in an interdisciplinary and applied approach. Rather than teach the four disciplines as separate and discrete subjects, STEM integrates them into a cohesive learning paradigm based on real-world applications.