Elizabeth Anne Holmes, popularly known as Elizabeth Holmes is an American former businesswoman. Holmes was the founder and chief executive of Theranos, a now-defunct health technology company. The company claimed to have revolutionized blood testing by developing testing methods that could use surprisingly small volumes of blood such as from a fingerprick. However, Theranos started to decline after a series of journalism and regulatory investigations revealed doubts about the company’s technology claims and whether Homes had misled investors and the government. Theranos and Holmes were ultimately charged with deceiving investors by “massive fraud” through false or exaggerated claims about the accuracy of the company’s blood-testing technology. The case, U.S. v. Holmes, et al. began on 31 August 2021.
What is Elizabeth Holmes Famous For?
- The founder and chief executive of Theranos, a now-defunct health technology company.
Where is Elizabeth Holmes From?
Elizabeth Holmes was born on 3 February 1984. Her birth name is Elizabeth Anne Holmes. Her birth place is in Washington, D.C. in the United States. She holds an American nationality. She was born to her father, Christian Rasmus Holmes IV, and her mother, Noel Anne Daoust. She belongs to white ethnicity and her religion is Christianity. She has a brother named, Christian.
Regarding her educational background, she attended St. John’s School. She was interested in computer programming and sold C++ compilers to Chinese universities during high school. Her parents had arranged Mandarin Chinese home tutoring. She began attending Stanford University’s summer Mandarin program. She studied chemical engineering. She worked as a student researcher and laboratory assistant in the School of Engineering. She worked in the laboratory at the Genome Institute of Singapore at the end of her freshman year. She tested for severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus (SARS-CoV-1) through the collection of blood samples with syringes. She filed her first patent application on a wearable drug-delivery patch in 2003. She dropped out of Stanford School of Engineering in 2004. She used her tuition money as seed funding for a consumer healthcare technology company.
Source: @wsj
Elizabeth Holmes Theranos
- Elizabeth Holmes founded the company Real-Time Curs in Palo Alto, California in 2003.
- She pitched the idea to reap “vast amounts of data from a few droplets of blood-derived from the tip of a finger” to her medicine professor Phyllis Gardner at Stanford, to which Garnder responded, “I don’t think your idea is going to work”.
- Holmes did not back out from her idea and succeeded in getting her advisor and dean at the School of Engineering, Channing Robertson, to back her idea.
- She renamed the company, Theranos in 2003 and Robertson became the company’s first board member.
- She raised $6 million to fund the firm by December 2004 and over $92 million in venture capital by the end of 2010.
- She operated Theranos in the “stealth model” without press releases or a company website until September 2013.
- Theranos announced a partnership with Walgreens to launch in-store blood sample collection centers.
- Her name appeared on 18 U.S. patents and 66 foreign patents by the end of 2014.
- She established agreements with Cleveland Clinic, Capital BlueCross, and AmeriHealth Caritas to use Theranos technology in 2015.
- John Carreyrou of The Wall Street Journal received a tip from a medical expert who thought the Edison blood-testing device seemed suspicious. Carreyrou initiated a secret, months-long investigation of Theranos.
- Holmes tried to stop Carreyrou from publishing through legal and financial threats against Carreyrou, Journal, and the whistleblowers.
- Carreyrou published the article in October 2015 where he detailed how the Edison device gave inaccurate results.
- Carreyrou continued to expose Holmes in a series of articles. Carreyrou published a book titled, Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup in 2018. The book detailed an investigation of Theranos.
- Holmes denied all the claims.
- The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) officially banned Holmes from owning, operating, or directing blood-testing services for two years in July 2016.
- The State of Arizona filed suit against Theranos in 2017, alleging that the company had sold 1.5 million blood tests to Arizonas while concealing or misrepresenting important facts about those tests.
- Theranos settled the lawsuit by agreeing to refund the cost of the tests to consumers and to pay $225,000 in civil fines and attorney fees, for a total of $4.65 million.
- The Holmes U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission charged Theranos and Holmes with deceiving investors by “massive fraud” through false or exaggerated claims about the accuracy of the company’s blood-testing technology in 2018.
- Holmes settled the charges by paying a $500,000 fine and returned 18.9 million shares to the company and relinquished her voting control of Theranos.
- She was also barred from serving as an officer or director of a public company for ten years.
- A federal grand jury indicted Holmes and former Theranos COO Ramesh Balwani on nine counts of wire fraud and two counts of conspiracy to commit wire fraud for distributing blood tests with falsified results to consumers in 2018.
- The case U.S. v. Holmes, et al. began on 31 August 2021.
Source: @facebook
Who is Elizabeth Holmes Husband?
Elizabeth Holmes is a married woman. She is married to William “Billy” Evans. The couple got engaged in early 2019. They later tied a knot to each other in a private ceremony in mid-2019. Their first child, a son, was born in July 2021. The family lives in San Francisco. Evans is the heir to the Evans Hotel Group.
Holmes previously dated technology entrepreneur Ramesh “Sunny” Balwani. They jointly ran Theranos.
How Tall is Elizabeth Holmes?
Elizabeth Holmes stands at the height of 1.69 m tall. She has a body weight of around 65 kg. She has a slim body build. Her eye color is blue and her hair color is blonde. Her sexual orientation is straight.
What is Elizabeth Holmes Net Worth?
Elizabeth Holmes was recognized by Forbes as the world’s youngest self-made female billionaire in 2014. She was ranked at No. 110 on the Forbes 400 list. Her company Theranos was valued at $9 billion and had raised more than $400 million in venture capital. She was named Fortune’s Businessperson of the Year and listed on its 40 Under 40. Forbes listed her as one of America’s Richest Self-Made Women in 2015. Her net worth was estimated at $4.5 billion. Following the revelations of potential fraud about Theranos, Forbes estimated her net worth to zero and named her one of the “World’s Most Disappointing Leaders”.
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