An American former biotechnology entrepreneur, Elizabeth Anne Holmes was convicted of criminal fraud. When Holmes founded and served as CEO of Theranos in 2003. The health technology company claimed to have revolutionized blood testing by developing methods that used surprisingly small volumes of blood, such as that obtained from a fingerprick. The company has since gone out of business.
According to Forbes, who valued her company at $9 billion at the time. Holmes was the youngest and wealthiest self-made female billionaire in the United States by 2015. When it became clear that Theranos’ claims were fraudulent, Forbes lowered its estimate of Holmes’s net worth to zero, and Fortune included her in an article on “The World’s 19 Most Disappointing Leaders” that year.
Early Life Of Elizabeth Holmes
Her name is Elizabeth Holmes, and she was born on the 3rd of February 1984 in Washington, D.C. Enron, a former energy company that went bankrupt after an accounting fraud scandal that Christian Rasmus Holmes IV worked for, was Christian’s alma mater. As a Congressional committee aide, Noel Anne worked for the House of Representatives.
Then he went on to work for government agencies like USAID and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Christian traces his ancestry back to the Scandinavian nation of Denmark. Genealogy has it that her great, great-great-grandfather was Hungarian immigrant Charles Louis Fleischmann who founded Fleischmann’s Yeast company.
The Holmes ancestors “friend Joseph Fuisz recalls that the parents “were very proud of their yeast empire’s history and that they yearned for the days of yore when they were one of America’s richest families. Moreover, I believe Elizabeth was able to tap into this at a young age.” A French Canadian ancestor on her father’s side, her mother was born in Georgia. In Houston, Holmes went to St. John’s School. At the beginning of her career in computer programming, she sold C++ compilers to Chinese universities.
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Theranos Founding by Elizabeth Holmes
To “democratise” healthcare, Holmes founded Real-Time Cures in Palo Alto, California, in 2003.It was Holmes’ stated goal to conduct blood tests using only a small amount of blood because of her fear of needles. When Holmes explained to her Stanford medicine professor Phyllis Gardner her plan to collect “vast amounts of data from a few droplets of blood derived from the tip of a finger.”
Gardner responded, “I don’t think your idea is going to work,” explaining that it was impossible to do what Holmes claimed. The same thing was said by a number of other highly qualified medical professors to Holmes. Channing Robertson, the dean of the School of Engineering, supported Holmes’s idea, but Holmes refused to give up.
In 2003, Holmes changed the company’s name to Theranos (a mashup of the words “therapy” and “diagnosis”) to reflect this new direction.
Robertson joined the company’s board of directors for the first time and introduced Holmes to venture capitalists. Apple co-founder Steve Jobs was a huge fan of Sherlock Holmes, and Holmes consciously mimicked his style, often donning a black turtleneck sweater like Jobs.
Aim of Elizabeth Holmes
Aiming to raise money and expand. Holmes had raised $6 million to fund the company. Theranos had raised over $92 million in venture capital by the end of 2010.George Shultz, a former secretary of state, introduced Holmes to him in July 2011. He became a member of Theranos’ board of directors after a two-hour meeting. Over the next three years, Holmes was hailed for forming the most illustrious board in U.S. corporate history.
It wasn’t until September 2013 that the company announced a partnership with Walgreens to open in-store blood sample collection centres that Holmes put Theranos into “stealth mode.” As the youngest self-made female billionaire in the world, Forbes ranked Holmes at #110 on the Forbes 400 list in 2014.
More than $400 million in venture capital had been invested in Theranos. There were 18 United States patents and 66 foreign patents in her name at the end of last year. With the help of Holmes, Cleveland Clinic, Capital BlueCross, and AmeriHealth Caritas have all signed on to use Theranos technology in 2015.
Personal Life of Elizabeth Holmes
During a trip to Beijing as part of Stanford University’s Mandarin programme. She met Balwani in 2002 and they married in 2013. After graduating from high school, Holmes was just 18 years old at the time of her encounter with Balwani. Balwani was 19 years her senior and was already married to another woman.
By the time Holmes dropped out of college in 2003, Balwani had divorced his wife in 2002 and was seeing someone else. In 2005, the couple shared an apartment for the first time. During her testimony on November 29, 2021, Holmes stated that she was raped while a student at Stanford and that she sought solace from Balwani in the aftermath.
During their relationship, which lasted more than 10 years, she said Balwani was extremely controlling and at times verbally and sexually abused her.
Net Worth of Elizabeth Holmes
Elizabeth Holmes’ net worth was once valued at $4.5 billion, according to Forbes. Following allegations of fraud, Forbes has since revised its wealth estimate for former Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes and now pegs her net worth at zero by the year 2022.
In 2015, Forbes named Holmes the country’s youngest self-made female billionaire, with a $9 billion valuation for her now-defunct health company. She is married to William Evans, the heir to the Evans Hotel Group, and they currently live in a $135 million Silicon Valley home.
Where is Elizabeth Holmes now?
The Wall Street Journal reports that on January 3rd, 2022, a jury found Holmes guilty of four counts of criminal fraud against investors. The type and length of her sentence will be decided at her sentencing in mid-September. On all four counts of criminal fraud, Holmes faces up to 20 years in prison, as well as hefty fines, if she is proven guilty.
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