It’s safe to say I have spent the last couple weeks obsessed with the previous CEO of Theranos, Elizabeth Holmes. Elizabeth Holmes is the Stanford dropout who would move on to create a company that falsely claimed could perform hundreds of medical tests only using a single drop of blood.
Along the way, medical professionals believed this to be a feat impossible without technology way beyond our years. But that didn’t stop Elizabeth Holmes from selling her idea to Wall Street and turning her scheme into a billion-dollar enterprise.
Throughout Holmes’ tenure as the CEO of her company, she lied about the capabilities of her invention, the Edison, using a competitor’s machine to falsify tests. To keep her charade going, she and her boyfriend, Ramesh “Sunny” Balwani, ruled their company with an iron fist. Security was tight and anyone who alluded to the scheme faced a NDA lawsuit.
Hulu is currently airing an eight part drama series on the rise and fall of her legacy. But who is Elizabeth Holmes behind this scam?
Her family and friends described her as socially awkward, but bright and determined to win. She would tell relatives that she hoped to be a billionaire and looked up to Steve Jobs with the utmost respect.
Elizabeth Holmes made horrific decisions and lied at the expense of patients and investors, but the Hulu series has shown how she’s fascinating as a manipulator who lied her way to the top. The series has also shed light how the fact she’s a woman impacted her rise to fame and her fall from grace.
As we traverse Holmes story from her start as an executive, many of her investors never treated her as more than a little girl who they could patronize. This is not in defense of Elizabeth, but this deduction leads to the important question of why they felt they could trust her invention, even when science contradicted her claims.
Holmes, like many women in the business world, had to assimilate for her idea to supersede her gender. I truly believe that Elizabeth Holmes believed in her idea because she believed that she was superior to most. She also knew that venture capitalists can be ignorant, not caring to understand the science behind the millions.
When this all came crashing down and she was being ripped to shreds by the media, investors, the law and the general public, it initially felt justified. Holmes’ lie of an invention had put many vulnerable patients’ health at risk.
However, I couldn’t help and watch the how her status as a woman became part of the argument.
It reaffirmed the idea for some that a woman would never be capable of inventing so impactful. This case has demonized all women in STEM, and scared off future women from trying to enter the field.
The tech world gave her a chance and she turned out to be a massive fraud. This will affect the way women are able to enter this field, their contributions and their ability to share their ideas. When one woman fails, it unfairly is put the blame on all women.
The beautifully awful thing about Elizabeth Holmes is that she pulled the perfect fraud. She was able to shed light on the venture capitalist world and the way women enter it.
But when you think about all the people she hurt, from patients to other women in stem, her reputation has left a oddly colored stain on the biotech world and the way that women exist in it.
She messed up bad. But she messed up more for doing it as a woman.