Elizabeth Anne Holmes (; born February 3, 1984) is the founder, Chairman, and CEO of Theranos, a privately held company known for its false claims to have devised revolutionary blood tests that used very small amounts of blood. In 2015, Forbes named Holmes as the youngest self-made female billionaire in the world due to a $9 billion valuation of Theranos. The next year Forbes revised her net value to zero dollars, given an updated $800 million valuation of Theranos and the fact that many of Theranos' investors hold preferred shares and so would be paid before Holmes (who holds common stock) in a liquidation event.
In 2016, after a series of journalistic and regulatory investigations that questioned the veracity of Holmes' claims, federal prosecutors began criminal investigations for potentially misleading investors and the government about Theranos' blood-testing technology. Following the revelation of potential fraud, Fortune named Holmes one of the "World's Most Disappointing Leaders". In 2016, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) banned Holmes from owning, operating, or directing a diagnostic lab for a period of two years. In April 2017, Theranos announced that it had reached a global settlement agreement with CMS, under which CMS withdrew the revocation of the company's Clinical Laboratory Improvement Amendments operating certificates and reduced its civil monetary penalty.
In December 2017, Theranos settled a lawsuit brought by the State of Arizona alleging that the company had sold 1.5 million blood tests to Arizonans while concealing or misrepresenting important facts about those tests. The company agreed to pay $200,000 in civil fines, and refund the cost of the tests to Arizona consumers.
In March 2018, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission sued Holmes and Theranos, accusing them of fraudulently raising more than $700 million from investors through false or exaggerated claims. In exchange for settling the charges, Holmes agreed to pay a $500,000 fine, return 18.9 million shares, relinquish her voting control of Theranos, and be barred from serving as an officer or director of a public company for ten years.
Video Elizabeth Holmes
Early life
Holmes was born in February 1984 in Washington, D.C. She is the daughter of government service worker Christian Holmes IV and congressional committee staffer Noel Daoust. When she was 9 years old, Holmes and her younger brother Christian Holmes V moved to Houston, Texas due to her family's job relocation. She wrote a letter to her father about the move saying, "What I really want out of life is to discover something new, something that mankind didn't know was possible to do." Holmes studied Mandarin as a child and completed three years of summer language classes at Stanford University before graduating from high school.
She attended St. John's School in Houston and was recognized for her "tireless optimism and a particularly warm smile." During high school, Holmes was interested in computer programming and started her first business selling C++ compilers to Chinese universities. In 2001, Holmes applied to Stanford University and was named a President's Scholar, which came with a stipend to use on a research project. She studied chemical engineering and used the stipend to work in a lab with Ph.D. candidates and Channing Robertson, dean at the engineering school.
After the end of her freshman year, Holmes worked in a lab at the Genome Institute of Singapore on testing for severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) through the collection of blood samples with syringes. She filed her first patent on a wearable drug-delivery patch in 2003. In March 2004, she dropped out of Stanford's School of Engineering and used her tuition money as seed funding for a consumer healthcare technology company.
Maps Elizabeth Holmes
Theranos
Founding of Theranos
Holmes founded the company in Palo Alto, California as Real-Time Cures to "democratize healthcare." Her goal was to make health information accessible to all people at any time so that risk of disease and health conditions could be detected early on. When Holmes initially pitched the idea to reap "vast amounts of data from a few droplets of blood derived from the tip of a finger" to several of her professors at Stanford including Phyllis Gardner, most of them said that it was "virtually impossible to do so with any real efficacy". However, Holmes persisted in getting Robertson to back her idea.
In April 2004, she incorporated the company as Theranos (a portmanteau of "therapy" and "diagnosis") and rented the basement of a group college house. At that time, Holmes hired her first employee and rented lab space. Robertson became the company's first board member and introduced Holmes to venture capitalists.
Funding and expansion
By December 2004, she had raised $6 million to fund Theranos. The company's first revenue came from contracts Holmes established with pharmaceutical companies to conduct testing and other clinical trials. By the end of 2010, Holmes had more than $92 million in venture capital for Theranos. In July 2011, Holmes was introduced to former Secretary of State George Shultz. After a two-hour meeting, he joined the Theranos board of directors. She was recognized for forming "the most illustrious board in U.S. corporate history" over the next three years. Holmes operated Theranos in stealth mode without press releases or a company website until September 2013 when the company announced a partnership with Walgreens to make in-store blood sample collection centers.
Media attention increased in 2014 as she was on the cover of Fortune, Forbes, T: The New York Times Style Magazine and Inc., who considered her "The Next Steve Jobs". Forbes recognized Holmes as the world's youngest self-made female billionaire and ranked her #110 on the Forbes 400 in 2014. Theranos was valued at $9 billion with more than $400 million in venture capital. By the end of 2014, she had 18 U.S. patents and 66 foreign patents in her name.
During 2015, Holmes established agreements with Cleveland Clinic, Capital BlueCross and AmeriHealth Caritas to use Theranos technology.
Questions about Theranos
The Wall Street Journal reported in October 2015 that the Edison blood-testing device by Theranos might provide inaccurate results. Holmes denied the claims and said the company would publish data on the accuracy of its tests.
In January 2016, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) sent a warning letter to Theranos after inspecting its Newark, California laboratory. CMS regulators proposed a two-year ban on Holmes from owning or operating a blood lab after the company had not fixed problems within its California lab in March 2016. On The Today Show, Holmes said that she was "devastated we did not catch and fix these issues faster" and that the lab would be rebuilt with help from a new scientific and medical advisory board. In July 2016, the CMS banned Holmes from owning, operating, or directing a blood testing service for a period of two years. (The company has appealed that decision to a U.S. Department of Health and Human Services appeals board.) Shortly thereafter, Walgreens ended its relationship with Theranos and closed its in-store blood collection centers. The FDA also ordered the company to cease using its Capillary Tube Nanotainer device.
Other reported ongoing actions include civil and criminal investigations by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Northern District of California, an unspecified FBI investigation, and two class action fraud lawsuits. Holmes is reportedly standing by all of her company's claims and has denied any wrongdoing. In April 2017, Theranos announced that it had reached a global settlement agreement with CMS, resolving all outstanding legal and regulatory proceedings.
On May 16, 2017, approximately 99% of Theranos shareholders reached an agreement with the company to dismiss all current and potential litigation in exchange for shares of preferred stock. Holmes released a portion of her equity to offset any dilution of stock value to non-participating shareholders.
On March 14, 2018, Holmes settled an Securities and Exchange Commission lawsuit alleging fraud by making false or misleading statements about Theranos' technology and business. The fraud of the company included claiming the company's technology was being used by the US Department of Defense in combat situations despite never having been used (Defense Secretary Jim Mattis pushed for use of the technology although it was never materialized). Another false claim included claiming a $100 million revenue stream in 2014 that was actually $100,000. The terms of the settlement included surrendering voting control of Theranos, a ban on holding an officer position in a public company for 10 years, and a $500,000 fine.
Voluntarism
Holmes partnered with Carlos Slim Helú in June 2015 to improve blood testing in Mexico. In October 2015, she announced #IronSisters to help women in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) careers. She helped to draft and pass a law in Arizona to let people obtain and pay for lab tests without requiring insurance or healthcare provider approval.
Political Activism
Holmes was named Presidential Ambassador for Global Entrepreneurship under former President Barack Obama in 2015. Holmes was also scheduled to host a $2,700-a-head fundraiser for Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign in March 2016 at the Theranos Palo Alto, California headquarters, an event Chelsea Clinton was scheduled to attend. However, the fundraiser changed locations after her campaign was criticized for holding an event at the offices of a company under federal investigation. Holmes remained a host for the fundraiser, and Chelsea Clinton still attended the event.
Awards and recognition
Prior to journalist investigations, criminal investigation, civil suits, and being charged with "massive fraud" by the Securities and Exchange Commission, Holmes was named one of TIME's Most Influential People in the World in 2015. Holmes received the "Under 30 Doers" Award from Forbes and ranked on its 2015 list of the "Most Powerful Women". She was also named "Woman of the Year" by Glamour. Holmes was awarded the 2015 Horatio Alger Award, being the youngest recipient in its history. She had also previously been named Fortune's "Businessperson of the Year" and "40 Under 40" lists.
Following the scrutiny over the Theranos lab controversy, Fortune named Holmes one of the "World's Most Disappointing Leaders" for 2016.
In 2015 She was awarded the Honorary degree of Doctor of Humane Letters (DHL) from Pepperdine University in Malibu, California, She also served as the Commencement speaker at that ceremony. As of March 2018 her honorary degree has not been revoked.
Personal life
Holmes' father, Christian Rasmus Holmes IV, worked in the United States, Africa, and China as part of government agencies such as USAID. Her mother, Noel Anne Daoust, worked as a Congressional committee staffer. Holmes describes her fear of needles as one of her motivations for founding Theranos. Holmes is a descendant of Christian R. Holmes, a surgeon, engineer, inventor, and a decorated World War I veteran, and his wife Betty, a daughter of Charles Louis Fleischmann.
Prior to the March 2018 settlement, Holmes held a 50-percent stock ownership in Theranos. Forbes listed her as one of "America's Richest Self-Made Women" in 2015 with a net worth of $4.5 billion. In June 2016, Forbes released an updated valuation of $800 million for Theranos, which made Holmes's stake essentially worthless, because other investors owned preferred shares and would have been paid before Holmes, who owned only common stock. Holmes reportedly owes a $25 million debt to Theranos in connection with exercising options. She did not receive any company cash from the arrangement, nor did she sell any of her shares, including those associated with the debt.
Holmes's preferred daily uniform of a black turtleneck with a puffy black vest is generally assumed to be an imitation of her role model Steve Jobs, but in an interview with CNN's Dr. Sanjay Gupta, she said, "I was a young woman in a world in which there aren't a lot of young women, and I didn't want how I looked or what I wore to be what people were paying attention to. So I dressed very conservatively for a very long time, until it became all that everybody was talking about. And then, when that became what people were talking about, I changed it, because it was never about that."
Movie
A Theranos movie, tentatively titled "Bad Blood" is in development with Jennifer Lawrence in the role of Holmes and to be directed by Adam McKay.
References
External links
- Elizabeth Holmes on IMDb
- Elizabeth Holmes: Lab testing reinvented. Archived from the original on March 25, 2015.
- Makers: Elizabeth Holmes.
- American Masters: The Women's List.
Source of the article : Wikipedia