50 Facts About Elizabeth Holmes

1.

Elizabeth Anne Holmes was born on February 3,1984 and is an American former biotechnology entrepreneur who, in 2022, was convicted of fraud in connection to her blood-testing company, Theranos.

2.

The decline of Theranos began in 2015, when a series of journalistic and regulatory investigations revealed doubts about the company's claims and whether Elizabeth Holmes had misled investors and the government.

3.

Elizabeth Holmes was in a clandestine romantic relationship with Balwani during most of Theranos's history.

4.

Theranos and Elizabeth Holmes's career are the subject of a book, Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup, by The Wall Street Journal reporter John Carreyrou; an HBO documentary film, The Inventor: Out for Blood in Silicon Valley ; a true crime podcast, The Dropout; and a Hulu miniseries based on the podcast, The Dropout.

5.

Elizabeth Holmes was born on February 3,1984, in Washington, DC Her father, Christian Rasmus Holmes IV, was a vice president at Enron, an energy company that later went bankrupt after an accounting fraud scandal.

6.

Elizabeth Holmes graduated high school from St John's School in Houston.

7.

Elizabeth Holmes's parents had arranged Mandarin Chinese home tutoring, and partway through high school, Holmes began attending Stanford University's summer Mandarin program.

8.

In 2002, Elizabeth Holmes attended Stanford, where she studied chemical engineering and worked as a student researcher and laboratory assistant in the School of Engineering.

9.

Elizabeth Holmes filed her first patent application on a wearable drug-delivery patch in 2003.

10.

In 2003, Elizabeth Holmes founded the company Real-Time Cures in Palo Alto, California, to "democratize healthcare".

11.

Elizabeth Holmes described her fear of needles as a motivation and sought to perform blood tests using only small amounts of blood.

12.

When Elizabeth Holmes 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, Gardner responded, "I don't think your idea is going to work", explaining it was impossible to do what Elizabeth Holmes was claiming could be done.

13.

However, Elizabeth Holmes did not relent, and she succeeded in getting her advisor and dean at the School of Engineering, Channing Robertson, to back her idea.

14.

In 2003, Elizabeth Holmes renamed the company Theranos.

15.

Elizabeth Holmes was an admirer of Apple founder Steve Jobs, and deliberately copied his style, frequently dressing in a black turtleneck sweater, as Jobs did.

16.

Elizabeth Holmes said her mother dressed her in black turtlenecks when she was young and that she had worn the turtlenecks beginning around the age of eight, but she claims that she started wearing black turtlenecks upon founding the company in 2003.

17.

Elizabeth Holmes's family has maintained that her deep voice is authentic.

18.

In July 2011, Elizabeth Holmes was introduced to former secretary of state George Shultz.

19.

Elizabeth Holmes was recognized for forming "the most illustrious board in US corporate history" over the next three years.

20.

Elizabeth 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 launch in-store blood sample collection centers.

21.

Elizabeth Holmes was interviewed for Medscape by its editor-in-chief, Eric Topol, who praised her for "this phenomenal rebooting of laboratory medicine".

22.

When Elizabeth Holmes learned of the investigation, she initiated a campaign through her lawyer David Boies to stop Carreyrou from publishing, which included legal and financial threats against both the Journal and the whistleblowers.

23.

Elizabeth Holmes denied all the claims, calling the Journal a "tabloid" and promising the company would publish data on the accuracy of its tests.

24.

Elizabeth Holmes appeared on CNBC's Mad Money the same evening the article was published.

25.

CMS regulators proposed a two-year ban on Elizabeth Holmes from owning or operating a certified clinical laboratory after the company had not fixed problems in its California lab in March 2016.

26.

In July 2016, CMS banned Elizabeth Holmes from owning, operating, or directing a blood-testing service for a period of two years.

27.

Elizabeth Holmes released a portion of her equity to offset any dilution of stock value to non-participating shareholders.

28.

Elizabeth Holmes lied when it claimed to have a $100 million revenue stream in 2014.

29.

The terms of Elizabeth Holmes's settlement included surrendering voting control of Theranos, returning 18.9 million shares to the company, a ban on holding an officer or director position in a public company for 10 years, and a $500,000 fine.

30.

Elizabeth Holmes was tried in the US District Court for the Northern District of California, with US district judge Edward Davila presiding.

31.

Elizabeth Holmes testified in self-defense for seven days, claiming among other things that she was misled by her staff about the technology, and that her ex-romantic partner Sunny Balwani, who was facing trial, held influence over her during the romantic relationship they had and which was still ongoing when the alleged criminal acts happened.

32.

Elizabeth Holmes waited on sentencing while remaining 'at liberty' on $500,000 bail, secured with property.

33.

Elizabeth Holmes faced a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison, and a fine of $250,000, plus restitution, for each count of wire fraud and for each conspiracy count.

34.

Elizabeth Holmes asked the district court to delay her prison-term start date pending the appeal, but the court ruled that Elizabeth Holmes's appeal had failed to raise "substantial questions of law or fact".

35.

Elizabeth Holmes appealed that decision, which triggered an automatic delay of her term of incarceration, pending the resolution of the second appeal, though that appeal was rejected in May 2023.

36.

Elizabeth Holmes was ordered to pay $452 million to the victims of the fraud.

37.

Elizabeth Holmes partnered with Carlos Slim in June 2015 to improve blood testing in Mexico.

38.

Elizabeth Holmes received the Under 30 Doers Award from Forbes and was ranked number 73 in its 2015 list of "the world's most powerful women".

39.

Elizabeth Holmes was named Woman of the Year by Glamour and received an Honorary Doctor of Humane Letters from Pepperdine University.

40.

Elizabeth Holmes was awarded the 2015 Horatio Alger Award of the Horatio Alger Association of Distinguished Americans, making her its youngest recipient in history.

41.

Elizabeth Holmes previously had been named Fortunes Businessperson of the Year and had been listed in its 40 Under 40 feature.

42.

Elizabeth Holmes was romantically involved with technology entrepreneur Ramesh "Sunny" Balwani, a Pakistani-born Hindu who immigrated to India and then the US.

43.

Elizabeth Holmes met him in 2002 during a trip to Beijing as part of Stanford University's Mandarin program.

44.

Elizabeth Holmes was 18 at the time and had just graduated from high school; Balwani is 19 years older than Elizabeth Holmes and he was married to another woman at the time.

45.

The circumstances of his departure are unclear; Elizabeth Holmes has stated that she fired him, but Balwani says that he left of his own accord.

46.

Elizabeth Holmes reportedly owed a $25 million debt to Theranos in connection with exercising stock options.

47.

Elizabeth Holmes did not receive any company cash from the arrangement, nor did she sell any of her shares, including those associated with the debt.

48.

In early 2019, Elizabeth Holmes became engaged to William "Billy" Evans, a 27-year-old heir to Evans Hotels, a family-owned group of hotels in the San Diego area.

49.

Elizabeth Holmes gave birth to a second child according to a court filing from February 2023 as part of an argument for delaying the start of her prison term.

50.

Elizabeth Holmes has been featured in a number of media works:.